


Roundabout

by Gruoch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Breakups, College graduation, Gerald the alpaca cameo, Peter Parker and a series of unfortunate events, Recreational Drug Use, Tragicomedy, breakdowns, canon has no power here, the softest of soft comics crossovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22389889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gruoch/pseuds/Gruoch
Summary: “Are you being killed right now?” Tony asks. “Am I listening to your final moments?”“Maybe,” Peter chokes out, weakly pedaling his legs in the air while he futilely scrambles to pry the hand away from his throat.Tony releases a sharp huff, irritated. “You areabsolutelynot allowed to die right now. Your graduation is a month away. Pepper’s moved around all her meetings to be free that day, and I’ve already given the deposit to the catering company for your party. I can’t get it back if I have to cancel now because of your untimely demise.”***In which Peter attempts to survive long enough to graduate, Tony moonlights as a semi-professional party planner, and absolutely nothing goes according to plan.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 140
Kudos: 556
Collections: Avidreaders Spiderman completed faves, Peter Parker Stories, Peter Parker in College, god tier spider-man fics





	Roundabout

**Author's Note:**

> I know I mentioned I was working on a sequel to my last Peter-in-college fic, but this is Not That, although I suppose it could be read as a kind of whacky AU sequel if you so desired. Either way, please enjoy.

It’s a little after two in the afternoon on a bright, unseasonably warm Wednesday in April, and Peter should be about halfway through one of his final biochem lab classes before he graduates. 

Instead, he’s wrestling a seven-foot-tall lizard-man in the middle of Washington Square Park. On a weirdness scale where a one is armed robbery and a ten is intergalactic travel via alien spacecraft, Peter ranks it around a four.

 _Nah dude,_ Ned argues via text after Peter sends him a picture of the lizard-man. _That’s a solid 5. If rhino guy was a 5 then lizard man is deffo a 5 too_

Peter concedes the point, but only because lizard-man is wearing a shredded white lab coat and a pair of khaki cargo shorts that look like something a middle-aged dorky dad tourist would wear. The outfit definitely adds a weirdness point.

Lizard-man ranks a lot higher on the danger scale, Peter decides as it rips its arms free of his webs yet again and then uproots a tree as easily as a gardener pulls up a carrot. The crowd of spectators crouched behind the park’s triumphal arch take pictures and video on their phones and boo and cheer like they’re at a sporting event or something.

“Hey, Karen,” Peter says, leaping to avoid the tree as lizard-man hurls it in his direction. “I would really, really appreciate any advice you could give on how to subdue Godzilla here. If we wrap this up in the next ten minutes, I can still make the tail-end of my lab.”

 _“According to my readings your opponent is ectothermic and susceptible to rapid hypothermia if exposed to low temperatures, which would result in a decrease in speed and strength,”_ Karen offers.

“Karen, it’s eighty degrees and sunny out,” Peter replies while narrowly dodging a clawed hand swiping at his face. “Unless you can direct me to a nearby refrigerator capable of handling a giant, enraged lizard strong enough to shred a city bus in a matter of seconds, that information is basically useless to me. Do you know of such a refrigerator?”

_“I do not.”_

“Well, thanks for that fascinating but super useless information, I guess,” Peter sighs, just before he’s snatched up and bodily hurled like a rag doll at tremendous speed and force into a lamppost, which then topples over with a metallic groan onto his crumpled body. 

_“You’re very welcome. I’m always happy to help you, Peter,”_ Karen says cheerfully. _“Also, I’m detecting a non-displaced fracture of your seventh rib on your right side.”_

“I am very aware, thank you,” Peter replies through clenched teeth, dragging himself out from under the lamppost. “Any other tidbits you can offer? I’m seriously open to any and all suggestions at this point. Please tell me you have something else, anything else. I can feel my GPA plummeting as we speak.”

 _“Incoming call from Tony Stark,”_ Karen chirps.

“Yeah, no, that’s not helpful. That’s the opposite of helpful,” Peter says as the lizard-man charges forward with a roar and grabs him by the throat, lifting him off his feet. “I know he’s calling about my graduation party again. I’m a little busy right now. Tell him I’ll call back la—”

“Hey, kid,” Tony’s voice cuts in. “Can you spare a minute? I’m here with May and Happy—you’re on speaker, say hi.”

“Hi,” Peter manages to croak out around the steely vice-like grip crushing his throat.

“Anyway, we’re trying to finalize lunch plans for after your graduation so I can make the reservation. Anything in particular tickle your fancy?”

“Can we—maybe talk about this—later?” Peter wheezes as the clawed hand brutally squeezes his windpipe. “I’m—right in the middle—of something.”

There’s a pause at the other end of the call. 

“Does this have something to do with all the police cars and fire trucks tearing down Sixth Avenue?” Tony asks.

“Probably,” Peter gasps out. Black spots are starting to dance around the edges of his vision. He wonders if he’ll still be posthumously awarded his degree if he dies before he can take his final exams. It only seems fair, after everything he’s done to keep the city safe.

There’s another, longer pause on the call, during which the background noises go quiet like Tony has taken the call off speaker or walked into another, more private room.

“Are you being killed right now?” Tony asks in a low voice. “Am I listening to your final moments?”

“Maybe,” Peter chokes out, weakly pedaling his legs in the air while he futilely scrambles to pry the hand away from his throat.

Tony releases a sharp huff, irritated. “You are _absolutely_ not allowed to die right now. Your graduation is a month away. Pepper’s moved around all her meetings to be free that day, and I’ve already given the deposit to the catering company for your party. I can’t get it back if I have to cancel now because of your untimely demise.”

“Just have them—cater my funeral.”

“That is _not_ funny. Do you hear me? I am _not_ amused.”

“I wasn’t—I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Peter squeaks out, struggling to push the lizard-man’s slavering jaws away from his face. “Just—practical.”

“God almighty. Can we please enjoy _one_ family event where everyone is alive and in one piece?” Tony sighs. “Look—if you can hang tight I can have Nat and Sam there in fifteen minutes.”

“I probably—don’t have fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, what about that moronic arsonist roommate of yours? Is he around?”

“Johnny’s a UN employed—a UN employed—member of an—an enhanced peacekeeping task force,” Peter chokes out, managing to get a knee in between himself and the lizard-man and create enough wiggle room to suck in a quick breath. “He doesn’t—have local jurisdiction.”

“What the fucking fuck?” Tony says, exasperated. “I swear to god, these new Accords are an even bigger mess than the original ones. Well, you won’t be the first person killed by bureaucratic red-tape.”

“Cool,” Peter wheezes as the lizard-man goes back to wringing his neck.

“I’m kidding—there’s no way in hell I’m letting you die before you graduate. Your aunt would murder me. Fortunately for us both, I’m retired and technically free of the yoke of international and domestic laws surrounding superhero hijinks,” Tony says. “Hang on a sec, let me get a visual here...Okay, are all the drugs I took in the nineties finally catching up to me? Or am I actually looking at a giant lizard in a lab coat?”

“It’s—a lizard—in a lab coat,” Peter confirms with difficulty. His lips are starting to go numb.

“Well. Okay, then. Not the weirdest thing I’ve seen, I suppose. Alright, kid,” Tony continues briskly, “you might want to brace yourself—this thing is more about shock and awe than surgical precision. It might hurt a little.”

“Wait, what—” Peter gasps out, before he’s hit by what feels like a speeding bus.

The next thing he knows, he’s lying flat on his back, soaking wet and staring up at a sky that spins in lazy, nauseating circles overhead. The strangling grip around his throat is gone, replaced by a high-pitched ringing in his right ear and a sensation like every bone in his body has been liquified. 

It takes him a minute to realize that Tony is still talking. 

“Kid? Kid, you alright?”

Peter pushes himself upright with a groan. “Ow, god. I don’t know. I feel like all my internal organs have collapsed.”

He looks around, dazed and blinking, and realizes that he’s sitting in the park’s fountain, about thirty feet away from where he had been getting strangled to death. The lizard-man is lying motionless beside him, its thick tongue flopped out over long, serrated teeth. A sleek drone silently hovers above its prone body.

“What was that? Was that necessary?” Peter asks, getting shakily to his feet and working his jaw around, trying to get the ringing sound to stop. “I think you blew out my eardrum.”

“New and improved sonic cannon. Pretty nifty, right? Apologies for the rough handling. I wanted to make sure the mutated sewer gator wouldn’t get up again, what with all the idiot civilians hanging around. I was ninety-percent sure you could take a semi-direct blast without serious injury.”

“Ninety-percent sure? Gee, so confident. And I thought you weren’t making weapons anymore,” Peter says, staggering out of the fountain. 

“I’m not. The drones are just a personal diversion.”

“A personal diversion?” Peter repeats, wincing as he hobbles away a little faster. The cops and firefighters have arrived along with animal control and a pair of stony-faced men in black suits and sunglasses that definitely look like SHIELD agents. “You need better hobbies.”

“My dumb hobby just saved your life,” Tony points out. “You’re welcome.”

“Yeah, thanks. I guess.”

“So, anyway, now that that’s over,” Tony continues breezily, “let’s talk party plans. How does sushi sound for lunch?”

Peter pauses his climb up the side of a building in order to press an arm against his mouth to muffle the sound of his scream. 

“Sounds perfect,” he says, ignoring the nagging pains that flair up as he launches himself off the building and starts swinging towards campus, still hoping he can at least catch the last few minutes of his lab. 

***

When Peter was in the second grade, around six months after he had gone to live with his aunt and uncle, a pediatrician had given him a diagnosis of _failure to thrive_ during his annual physical exam. 

“He’s underachieving in weight and height for his age group,” the doctor had told May and Ben while Peter had sat shivering in a paper smock on the exam table.

“It just means you’re a little smaller than your friends,” Ben had explained to him during the car ride home. “And that’s okay, Pete. You’ll catch up.”

Ben had meant to be reassuring, but at the time Peter had been living with a secret, deep-rooted fear that if he wasn’t absolutely perfect, that if he failed to live up to their expectations—if he _failed to thrive_ —that May and Ben would send him away to live somewhere else with strangers, so the words had not provided much comfort. He’d eventually realize that May and Ben would never under any circumstance ever do such a thing, but the phrase— _failure to thrive_ —and the awful dread that went with it would stick with him. Even after he became Spider-Man, when it didn’t matter if he was a little on the shrimpy side because he could throw a taxi cab the length of a city block, he’d still think about it in panicky, sweaty moments in the night, or before a big exam, or on a spaceship billions of miles away from home, being knighted as an Avenger.

He’s thinking about it right now, standing with his back pressed against the wall outside of his biochem lab classroom, shrinking under the hard stare of a very irate Gwen Stacy, who looks ready and extremely willing to commit murder.

“You missed our lab. _Again._ I had to do all the work. _Again,_ ” she spits out.

“I know,” Peter replies, wilting further. “I know, I’m the worst lab partner ever. I’m so sorry.”

“You realize that this final lab project is worth thirty-percent of our grade, right?”

“Yes. Yes, I am very aware. And I’m going to do my part, I promise,” Peter says. “I just—”

“You just _what?_ ” Gwen snaps, taking another step forward into his personal space.

“I just. Um. Need to borrow your notes for the assignment,” Peter mumbles, cowering and wondering how being confronted by this willowy nerdy engineering major could be so much more terrifying than being strangled by a giant lizard.

Gwen releases a hard exhale through her nose, glaring at him for a long, long moment.

“Pay me for them,” she demands finally.

Peter blinks at her. “You want me to _pay_ you?”

“Yes. If you want my notes again, you can pay me for them. I’m done doing unpaid labor for my useless lab partner. But I’m perfectly happy to help you—for twenty bucks.”

“Twenty bucks?” Peter repeats, incredulous.

“Twenty. Bucks. Or no deal,” Gwen says firmly.

“Okay. Okay.” Peter fumbles for his wallet, only to open it and find it completely empty save for an ancient, crumpled Duane Reade receipt. He looks back at Gwen, grimacing. “Can I maybe offer an IOU until I get paid next week?”

“Nope,” Gwen says, turning on her heel and walking away.

“ _Please._ I’ve got to pass this lab to graduate on time,” Peter begs, hurrying along behind her.

“So go ask someone else for their notes. I don’t know why you’re always bothering me.”

“Because you’re my only friend here,” Peter replies as he limps along beside her.

“Okay, besides being super depressing, that’s _so_ wrong. You’re _not_ my friend. I just keep getting stuck with you as my lab partner every semester because everyone else in our department figured out a long time ago that you’re completely unreliable and refuses to work with you. At best you’re like, my charity case or something.”

“Gwen, please. I am _begging_ you,” Peter says, starting to feel a little desperate. “I know I’m the worst lab partner on the planet, and you have every right to hate my guts, but with this lab I have just barely enough credits to graduate right now. If I fail this lab, that’s it—I’m fucked.”

Gwen comes to a reluctant stop again, turning to face him once more.

“Please,” he says again, clutching his hands together against his chest, his eyes imploring.

Gwen sighs and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Okay. Fine. I’ll give you my notes for our final assignment.”

Peter’s shoulders sag in relief. “Thank you.”

“But I want you to do something for me,” she adds. “You’re roommates with Johnny Storm, right?”

“Um. Yeah,” Peter cautiously confirms. “Why, do you want his number?”

Gwen makes a little derisive sound, rolling her eyes. 

“Absolutely not. I want him to show up in uniform to my little cousin’s eighth birthday party the Saturday before graduation. Think you can convince him to come?”

“That’s kinda short notice, right?” Peter says. “I mean, half the time he’s not even on the planet. What about Spider-Man? We’re on good terms—I could probably get him to come.”

“Who cares about Spider-Man when the Torch is right there?” Gwen huffs. “He’s been to _space._ ”

“Spider-Man’s been to space,” Peter mumbles, a little hurt.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just saying I know for sure that Spider-Man can be there.” Peter pauses, considering his track record with keeping commitments. “I’m eighty-two-percent sure he can be there. And anyway, I don’t get what Johnny has that Spider-Man doesn’t. I mean, Johnny is nice and all, but he’s…a _himbo._ ”

“Yeah, he is,” Gwen agrees. “That’s his whole appeal.”

Peter sighs. “Okay, I can see that, sure, but Spider-Man—”

Gwen waves a hand impatiently. “Look, Spider-Man is a no-go with my family. My aunt and my dad are both cops. They’re not exactly crazy about the whole masked vigilante thing. I mean, would you invite a criminal to your eight-year-old’s birthday party?”

“I think _criminal_ is a very strong word. He’s just trying to keep people safe—” Peter starts.

Gwen cuts him off. “I want a government-employed cop-approved supe. If you can’t get Johnny Storm, then my little cousin is also a big fan of Captain America. You know him? You seem to have a lot of superhero friends.”

“Well. You meet one, you meet them all, right? They run in the same circles,” Peter explains lamely. He’s starting to sweat. He does a lot of nervous sweating around Gwen.

“Uh-Huh. So. We have a deal?”

Peter lets out a long exhale, feeling totally defeated by this point. “Okay. Yes. I’ll talk to Johnny next time I see him.”

“Excellent,” Gwen replies, digging through her bag. She pulls out her notes along with a wad of tissues and hands both to him. “Here. Your nose is bleeding. What happened this time?”

Peter presses the tissues to his nose. “Uh…I…walked into a tree branch.”

Gwen raises an eyebrow and gestures to the ring of bruises around his neck. “What, the tree strangled you?”

“Um. Yeah? It happens,” Peter mumbles, sweating even more.

Gwen shakes her head, looking almost disappointed. “You’re a really bad liar. If you’re going to live a secret double life, you should at least learn how to tell a credible lie.”

Peter swallows hard. “I don’t—what? I don’t have a secret double life. Who thinks I have a secret double life?”

“Seriously? Half our class thinks you’re a Russian spy or something. The other half thinks you have a drug problem. Personally, I side with the latter. It would explain the absenteeism and weird injuries and why you’re so secretive and strange.”

“What? I don’t do drugs,” Peter protests.”I haven’t even smoked pot. And I’m definitely not a Russian spy. Do you seriously believe that?”

“I don’t know. We’ve taken like six classes together and spent hours together outside of class, and I feel like I still don’t know anything about you. It’s sort of strange.”

“Well. That’s because I’m…very boring. And normal. Just a normal, very boring person with a normal, very boring life.”

“Okay, when you say things like that, you actually sound even more like you have a secret double life,” Gwen says. She squints at him. “You seriously haven’t heard any of the conspiracy theories going around the engineering department about you over the past four years? Our mech lab T.A. is convinced you’re Spider-Man.”

Peter’s mouth goes bone-dry, even as he’s pretty sure he’s sweated completely through the back of his shirt.

“Yeah, well, our mech lab T.A. is a white guy with dreads, so I wouldn’t trust his opinion on anything. I mean, that’s totally ridiculous,” he says weakly, fighting an overwhelming urge to turn and run away as fast as he can. He stuffs the notes in his backpack and starts to back away. “Anyway—guess I better go. You know. Get to work on this project. So. See you around.”

“Hey,” Gwen calls after him as he rushes away. “Don’t forget about my cousin’s birthday!”

***

The birthday party request and the lab project both end up taking a backseat, because a few days later lizard-man escapes from whatever supposedly secure SHIELD facility it had been taken to and returns to wreak more havoc across Midtown, before disappearing into the sewer system. Peter spends his Sunday afternoon pursuing the beast through the disgusting, literal underbelly of the city, where he picks up a devastating stomach bug, courtesy of hours spent wading through knee-deep raw sewage, and a badly broken jaw, courtesy of lizard-man. He spends the next week lying on the bathroom floor, puking up mashed potatoes through the wires holding his jaw shut and cursing the day he was bitten by that stupid spider.

May comes to Peter’s apartment the day after the wires come off, bringing with her a ziploc bag full of badly burnt brownies to celebrate his ability to eat solid food again, and a request.

“Do me a favor, honey,” she says, while he gamely attempts to choke a brownie down. “Try not to get into any serious trouble until after your graduation ceremony.”

“Me? Trouble?” Peter says innocently, scraping a gluey chunk of brownie off the roof of his mouth with a finger. 

May squeezes his hand. “I know it’s silly, but I’d really like to see you walk up on that stage and get your diploma, with all the pomp and circumstance. You’ve worked so hard for it. And I’d like to get some nice pictures of you in your cap and gown—you know, without any black eyes or bruises or whatever. You have shiners in nearly every photo I have of you over the age of fourteen. People think I’ve raised a raccoon, not a handsome young man.”

Peter manages to swallow a bite, only for it to painfully lodge somewhere in the region of his sternum. “I like to think the black eyes give me a rogue-ish air of mystery.” 

May gives him a smile, but her eyes are tired. “Please, Peter. I know you got a lot going on, I know you can’t really take a break from the whole Spider-Man thing, but try to do me this one favor and stay away from the really dangerous stuff for a bit—you know, stick to muggings and car thefts and don’t go chasing big lizards down sewers, okay? It’s just...” 

She pauses to take a deep breath, and when she continues it’s with a slight waver in her voice. “Ben would be so proud if he could see his brilliant boy graduate, that’s all. He’d been talking about it since you were barely ten-years-old. He always believed in you so much, honey. If you can’t do it for me, then at least do it for his memory.”

Now there’s another painful knot in Peter’s chest, this one unrelated to the burnt brownies. He doesn’t like to make promises he suspects he can’t keep, but May is squeezing his hand again and she’s biting her lip the way she does when she’s trying not to cry.

“Okay. Okay—no black eyes, no bruises, alive and present for my graduation. I can do that,” Peter promises. “I’ll even get MJ to give me a haircut.”

May smiles again, relieved. She leans over and presses a kiss against Peter’s temple. “I love you, baby. We all love you so much. Just take care of yourself, alright? You get so busy taking care of everyone else, you forget about taking care of yourself.” 

“Yeah, I will,” Peter says, hugging her tightly and tamping down the little anxious whisper of doubt already rearing its forlorn head. 

It’s less than three weeks, he tells himself. He can keep his shit together for a few weeks.

***

In actuality, he manages to keep his shit together for less than twenty-four hours, which really feels par for the course. 

The unraveling starts at MJ’s apartment, where Peter has gone to dutifully submit himself to her clippers. She’d learned her barbering skills while briefly employed part-time at an upscale dog groomer the summer after they graduated high school, and offered her in-home salon services to her friends in exchange for Thai takeout and the occasional joint.

“You have hair like a cockapoo,” she’d told Peter the first time she’d taken a pair of scissors to his overgrown curls a week or so before their first semester of college started. He’d decided to accept that as a compliment, although she could have straight-up insulted him and he would have gratefully accepted that, too, so long as she kept running her fingers through his hair and blowing softly on the nape of his neck. He’d exchanged that first haircut for a take-out box of pad see ew and his virginity.

He brings a couple of boxes of pad thai this time, and after the haircut they take the boxes outside to eat on the fire escape. A neon sign has recently been erected on the building across the alleyway from MJ’s apartment, and it flicks on and off at stuttering, irregular intervals, bathing them in an eerie, erratic red light.

“Jeez, that’s annoying,” Peter says, after about twenty minutes of this. “Can you complain to the landlord or something?”

“It’s fine,” MJ says, using her chopsticks to dig out a shrimp from the bottom of her box with an intense amount of focus. “I’m, um. I’m actually moving in a few days.”

This is news to Peter. He frowns at her. “You are? Did your application for that place over in Flatbush get accepted?”

MJ shakes her head, still digging intently through her pad thai, before abruptly setting the box down.

“I got a job offer,” she tells Peter in a rush. “Well. A paid internship, really, but it could lead to a job, or at least help me get into law school in another year or two. I applied like three months ago and never heard anything ‘til today, so I thought nothing would come of it. But then I got a call this morning, and—I accepted it. It starts next Monday.”

“Oh, wow, MJ.” Peter sets his own takeout aside to gather her into a tight hug, smiling into her hair. “That’s so great. What is it?”

“It’s at this non-profit organization that offers legal services for refugees,” MJ replies. She sits back and pauses a moment, picking up her chopsticks and toying with them, and then adds, quietly, “It’s in Atlanta.”

“Oh,” Peter says, feeling a little like he’s been hit with the sonic cannon again. “That’s—far away. Really far away.”

MJ nods, still toying with the chopsticks. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Okay—so we can work something out,” Peter offers, even as he can feel his grip on things starting to slide. “I could come down and visit you. I think there’s an Amtrak that runs from New York to Atlanta. Or I could take a bus maybe?”

“Peter,” MJ says quietly. “How are you gonna do that?”

Peter shrugs. “I’ll find time to take more pictures and video for the Bugle. How much can a bus ticket cost?”

“It’s not just the money. It’s everything, it’s—” MJ stops, releasing a sharp breath. “Peter, you got accepted to MIT and CalTech with a full-ride at both, and you chose to stay here in the city and go to Empire State instead.”

“Yeah, because I got that super competitive internship with Dr. Octavius at ESU—he's the top researcher in his field, I'd have been crazy to turn that down,” Peter says. “And my aunt is here—I’m supposed to take care of her. And _you_ —you’re here.”

MJ shakes her head. “Peter, you didn’t stay here because of some internship or because of your aunt. And you didn’t stay here because of me. You stayed because of Spider-Man.”

“No, no,” Peter protests weakly. “I mean, maybe that was part of it, but—”

“Do you know how hard it is to make the long-distance thing seriously work for regular people? And you’re not a regular person,” MJ says, gently. 

The painful knot has twisted itself up behind Peter’s sternum again. “I know. I know, but—can we at least try? _Please._ ”

MJ sets the chopsticks down and looks over at him, and when the billboard's neon light flicks back on, he can see unshed tears shimmering in her eyes. The sight makes him feel sick, because it confirms what he already knows is happening. 

“I know you want to make this work,” she says, almost tenderly. “I really do believe that. I want it to work, too. But tell me, honestly—can you promise me right now that if I went to the train station in Atlanta to get you, that you’d step off that train every time? That you’d never, _ever_ break that promise?”

Peter looks back at her, holding his breath. The promise is right there on the tip of his tongue.

“MJ…I’m really sorry,” he says instead, his voice breaking.

“Me too,” she says. She leans over and kisses him. A goodbye kiss, soft and final. Then she cups his face in her hands, running her thumbs along his cheekbones, her lips curved into a sad smile. “Don’t cry, okay? If you cry, then I’ll cry, and I hate crying. I’ve already cried so much for you, you dork—all those times you got hurt, all those times you made me stay up late, worrying—I’ll never forgive you if you make me cry about this, too, so don’t. Can you at least promise me that much?”

He nods, swallowing down the painful lump in his throat. 

“I won’t,” he promises.

***

He keeps his promise for as long as it takes for him to board the train back to his neighborhood. As soon as he sits down in one of the sticky plastic seats, the reality of what just happened catches up to him, and then he’s crying—the kind of horrible, gut-deep sobbing that feels like it’s turning you inside out and draining you of everything. The train car he occupies is full despite the late hour, and he manages to muster up a tiny bit of gratitude within the sea of grief that engulfs him for his fellow New Yorkers, who resolutely pretend that the man having a total breakdown in their midst does not actually exist. Peter half-wishes that he really could simply cease to be.

His phone buzzes in his pocket the moment he leaves the station at his stop and steps foot above ground. He scrambles for it, a mad hope that it’s MJ calling to tell him she’s changed her mind blooming in his chest, then wilting when he sees that the caller ID displays Tony’s name. He sends it to voicemail, notices that there are three other missed calls from Tony, and stuffs the phone back into his pocket as he walks on towards his apartment building. The very last thing he wants to do right now, when he’s feeling so utterly shattered, is to discuss anything to do with parties or celebrations.

His phone buzzes again a block later, and this time it’s May calling. Peter takes a few deep breaths, trying to collect himself a little before answering.

“Hey, May,” he greets with artificial cheer.

“Why are you ignoring my calls?” Tony’s voice asks.

Peter groans internally, fighting the temptation to hurl the phone as far away as he can. “I’m not. I was taking the subway. I don’t get reception down there.”

“What do you mean, you don’t get reception? You have a Stark phone.”

“Yeah, well, this one must be defective because I don’t get reception underground,” Peter lies, ducking his head. It’s starting to rain and he doesn’t have an umbrella, which feels perfect, really.

“I’ll get you another,” Tony says flippantly. “Why does your voice sound funny? You sound like you have a cold or something.”

Peter trots up the steps to his apartment building, then fumbles with his keys at the lock, slipping inside right before the sky cracks open like an egg and unleashes a deluge of rain on the street. “I dunno. Allergies, or—why are you calling?”

“I wanted to inform you that there’s been a little hiccup with your graduation lunch.”

“A hiccup?” Peter says, winding his way up the stairs.

“Yeah. I reserved a nice private table at that new sushi restaurant over there near Grand Central, but some Saudi fat cat with a bank account even bigger than mine is apparently coming to town that same day and usurped our reservation. Can you believe that? I guess people respect money more than heroic sacrifice,” Tony complains. “My biggest regret in life is failing to utterly destroy the petroleum industry. I swear to god, oil lobbyists and spineless politicians are a bigger existential threat than genocidal alien invaders, and I would know—”

Peter cuts him off before Tony can digress into another endless tirade. “Okay, well, that’s a little disappointing, but it’s fine. I’m sure you can think of something else. You seem to have a lot of time on your hands these days. We can always just order pizza. Anyway, I’m back home, so…”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. I’ll let you go. Just one more thing,” Tony adds, while Peter braces himself. “Let’s do dinner next Friday. Usual time at the diner. That way we can finalize everything.”

“Yep. Sounds good. I’ll be there, bye,” Peter says, ending the call before Tony can get another word out and opening the door to his apartment.

He goes inside to find his roommate sitting on their beat up old couch watching TV and eating a bowl of cereal.

“Yooooo, Petey. Want some Lucky Charms?” Johnny offers, holding up his bowl. “This box has double marshmallows—aw, Pete. Peter. Have you been crying? You’re face is all blotchy.”

“No,” Peter says, dumping his backpack by the door. “Maybe. Yes. It’s fine.”

Johnny doesn’t look convinced. “You need a hug?”

Peter sniffs. “Sure, I mean, if you’re offering.”

“Hell yeah, I’ll cuddle the shit out of you, bro,” Johnny says, setting his bowl on the floor and leaping over the back of the sofa. He throws his arms around Peter, squeezing him tight. “Why were you crying, bud?”

“MJ broke up with me,” Peter says miserably.

“Again? Brutal, dude,” Johnny says, giving Peter another comforting squeeze. “But, I mean, you guys always get back together eventually.”

“This is different. She’s moving to Atlanta. She got an internship there. It’s fine, though,” Peter says past the tightness in his throat. “It’s for the best, really. She deserves a normal life. I can’t give that to her. So it’s fine. She was just, you know, the girl I’ve been in love with since I was sixteen-years-old, the person I thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with.”

“Aw, Pete.” Johnny makes a little unhappy noise, patting Peter’s back. “I guess this is bad time to bring up the fact that you’re two months behind on rent. Our landlord came by today and he’s threatening eviction. You need to cough up, man.”

“Oh god,” Peter groans, pulling away. “I can’t pay him. It’s the end of the semester. I have like twelve dollars in my bank account.”

“Why don’t you just ask Mother to help you out?” Johnny says, jumping back onto the couch and grabbing his cereal bowl.

“No. Absolutely not. I’m not asking Mr. Stark for money,” Peter says firmly. “I’d rather sell one of my kidneys on the dark web.”

“Why not? What’s the point of having a billionaire at your beck and call if you never hit him up for money?”

“Because I’m graduating and I’m supposed to be a fully-functioning adult now. If I have to beg for rent money, then I’ve failed,” Peter explains.

“Being two months behind on rent is also sort of failing at being a fully-functional adult,” Johnny points out.

Peter presses his hands against his face, groaning again. “Look, I’m not asking him. That would be inviting him to further meddle in my life. I just wanna go to bed and ignore all of my problems, okay?”

“Yeah, like a real adult,” Johnny deadpans, diving back into his cereal.

Peter chooses to ignore him, too. He shuffles down the dark hallway to his bedroom, feeling numb and exhausted now. He stands in the doorway to his room and feels along the wall for the light switch, flipping it on to reveal a total, utter disaster. 

It looks like a cyclone has gone through his room. Every inch of the floor is covered in a mess of papers and books and clothing. His dresser’s drawers have all been yanked out and dumped on the floor, and his mattress has been flipped over. It hangs off the bed frame at an angle, the blankets and pillows tossed haphazardly in opposite corners of the room.

For a very, very long moment, it feels as though time stops. Peter stands frozen in place with his hand still on the light switch, his heart doing a horrible flip-flopping thing in his chest as he stares wide-eyed at the catastrophe in front of him.

A gut-punched noise escapes him, breaking the spell. 

“Fuck. What the _fuck!_ ”

Johnny comes loping down the hall, drawn by Peter’s sounds of distress, cereal bowl still in hand. His eyes widen as he looks in at the chaos of Peter’s room.

“Whoa, holy shit,” he says around a mouthful of cereal. “Dude. Dude. _Dude._ You’ve been robbed.”

“Oh my god,” Peter says, clutching his hair and starting to panic now that the initial shock has somewhat tapered off. He looks over at the mess on his desk and his panic ramps up even more.

“Oh no,” he says, wading through the debris to his desk and yanking open the drawer. The Stark tablet Tony had given him for his last birthday is gone, along with a pricey graphing calculator. He hurries over to the pile of clothes that were dumped from his dresser and starts frantically digging through it, feeling sick. The three-hundred-dollars of emergency cash he kept stashed under his socks are gone, too, and so is the much-treasured wristwatch he had inherited from Ben. 

“Oh no,” he mumbles again, stumbling over to his closet. He always keeps the door closed but it’s yawning wide open now, clothes and hangers spilling out across the floor. He already knows what he’s going to find, but he looks anyway. His heart plummets straight through the bottom of his feet when his fears are confirmed—the shelf where he keeps his cameras is empty, thousands of dollars worth of equipment that he’s scrounged together over the years gone. 

Another little pained animal sound slips out of him. He sinks down to the floor and lets his head dangle between his knees, feeling lightheaded. He’s lost his girlfriend and his source of income in a single, horrible evening. The one small mercy in this nightmare is that none of his Spider suits were in the apartment when the theft happened. It feels like a very bitter comfort.

“Pete, hey—are you okay?” Johnny asks gently.

“No. No I am not okay,” Peter replies, dragging himself back up to his feet. He staggers out of the closet and sits down on the drooping mattress. “I’m gonna barf. All my stuff is gone.” 

He looks over at Johnny, hugging himself. “What are we supposed to do? I mean…I’m usually _saving_ people from being robbed. I don’t know what to do now. We—we need to call the cops, right? That’s what we should do, right? So they can maybe find out who did this?”

Johnny makes a face, biting his lip. “Okay, man, don’t get mad, but uh…” he stops to take a deep breath, and then finishes in a rush—“I maybe let the person who did this in.”

Peter blinks at him. “What?”

“Yeah,” Johnny says, his expression apologetic. “It was dumb. I was getting ready to go out for lunch this afternoon, and Harry Osborn showed up at our door—”

“Harry?” Peter interrupts. “Harry’s supposed to be in rehab right now.”

“Yeah, well, he said he wanted to apologize to you for being a dick when he wasn’t sober—that making amends was part of his recovery or whatever,” Johnny says. “I mean, he looked really good. He was dressed all nice and wasn’t like, fucked up and crying and professing his undying love for you, or ranting about how much he hates Spider-Man like he usually is when he shows up here, so I thought it would be okay to let him wait for you inside. I was trying to be nice.”

“Oh my god,” Peter groans, pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead. He wants to cry again, but feels too tired to even try. He drags himself to his feet and stumbles back to the pile of clothes dumped out of his dresser, half-heartedly attempting to fold a shirt, because he feels like his entire life will fall apart at the seams if he doesn’t at least create the illusion that he’s fixing this. 

“He stole a bunch of my clothes,” he murmurs half to himself, dazed. “Why would he steal my clothes? It’s stuff from like, the Target clearance rack. I don’t think he’s ever even been inside a Target, or any place that sells clothes for under half-a-grand. He even took underwear.”

“Not to make you feel even more violated than you probably already do, but I bet you a hundred bucks that creep is jacking off with them as we speak,” Johnny says, slurping milk from his cereal bowl.

“Oh my god,” Peter says again, abandoning the shirt and collapsing back onto the rumpled mattress, covering his face with his hands. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

Johnny picks his way through the mess to sit on the mattress next to him. “You want me to call the cops?”

Peter drops his hands away from his face to look up at him, startled. “What? No, we can’t call the cops, are you crazy?”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause it’s _Harry,_ ” Peter says. “I don’t want to be the reason he gets arrested again. He’s my friend.”

“Peter, look at this,” Johnny says, gesturing to the mess around them. “Harry is _not_ your friend, man. He’s your psycho ex-boyfriend. And he’s always been a total fuckup.”

“Yes, but _I’m_ the reason he’s a total fuck-up. All that crazy stuff with his dad and Spider-Man—that’s _my_ fault,” Peter says, choking back tears again. “I ruined his life. I can’t send him to jail now.”

“Dude,” Johnny says, looking genuinely concerned. “Peter. Your whole weird hero-guilt complex thing is like, _way_ intense, bro. That shit is not healthy. It’s starting to ruin _your_ life.”

“God, I am ruining my life, you’re right," Peter agrees. " _Spider-Man_ is ruining my life.”

“Okay, that’s not what I said,” Johnny says around another mouthful of cereal. “So. What do you wanna do? You want me to beat the shit out of him?”

“No. I don’t know. I can’t think right now,” Peter replies, curling onto his side and pulling his knees into his chest. “This is so fucked up. Everything is so fucked up. Just immolate me, please. Seriously.”

He crawls off the bed and starts grabbing clothes off the floor, stuffing them into a duffel bag.

“What are you doing?” Johnny asks.

“Leaving. I can’t stay here tonight. I can’t handle this right now. Everything is just… _too much._ I can’t breathe,” Peter says with a slightly hysterical edge, grabbing his keys and rushing out of the room.

“Okay, but seriously, man—don’t forget about the rent,” Johnny calls after him.

***

Peter thinks he must experience a stress-induced blackout or something, because he has no memory of the journey from his apartment building to his aunt’s place, nor does he notice the sleek Audi parked out in front of her building that could only belong to one person in this neighborhood—otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have gone inside.

He’s already feeling a little silly standing in the hallway outside May’s door, like he really should have handled this mess like the adult he ostensibly is instead of running to her, but the regret comes a moment too late. He’s already knocked on the door, and it opens a beat later before he can change his mind and run.

May stands in the doorway, looking surprised and then delighted by his impromptu appearance. She steps out to hug Peter.

“Oh! Hi, honey. We weren’t expecting you,” she says, rocking him back and forth. 

“Hey, sorry. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Of course not. Tony and I are just having a glass of wine and doing some party planning.”

“Oh no, he’s here?” Peter groans, immediately feeling even more regret. “May, he’s driving me crazy with this party stuff. It’s all he talks about. It’s so exhausting.”

May gives a little shrug. “Well, you know how Tony is. He has to have a hyper-fixation or he’ll just drop dead.”

“I just don’t get why you guys are making such a big deal out of it.”

“Let us have our fun,” May says, pinching his cheek. “We’re just so excited, that’s all. And I gotta be completely honest with you, sweetheart—we weren’t always sure you’d make it this far. Now come inside.”

Peter follows May across the threshold and then stops short, overwhelmed by a familiar pungent odor that is filling the apartment. 

“Well, look who it is—St. George,” Tony calls from where he sits on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table. “You won’t get that reference because your aunt raised you as a godless heathen. She didn’t provide you with any of that fortifying Italian Catholic guilt our own mothers instilled in us while we were growing up.”

“Don’t judge my parenting. And get your goddamn feet offa my table,” May says, playfully swatting his feet before sitting down next to him.

Peter stares at the pair of them, feeling like he’s stepped into some kind of surreal fever dream.

“I know who St. George is,” he says distractedly, sniffing at the air. “Were you…were you guys smoking pot in here?"

“What, are you gonna narc on us?” Tony replies. “Pepper’s out of town and Morgan’s with Happy, so we’re having a date night and yes, partaking in a little herbal therapy.”

“We’re Netflix and chilling,” May adds. 

“Oh my god,” Peter says, overcome with intense dread. 

“She means that in the literal sense. We’re just watching The Great British Bake Off while getting baked and planning your party. We’re not swinging or something—I’ve tried talking your aunt into it, but she keeps turning me down,” Tony says.

“He’s kidding, honey, don’t look so horrified,” May assures Peter. “Did you need to do laundry?”

“No. I, um...” Peter shakes his head, feeling stupid now. What he wants, what he really needs, is for someone to take care of him for a little while, but that doesn’t seem like the kind of request a fully-functioning adult would make.

“I just thought maybe I could stay here tonight, if that’s okay?” he asks instead, which still feels a little lame.

May’s demeanor immediately changes, a worried furrow appearing between her brows. She gets back up and comes over to Peter, grabbing his hands in hers. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened. Why did something have to happen?” Peter replies defensively. “You’re always asking me when I’m gonna visit so I just thought I’d come over, is all. Jeez, I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

May smiles, though the worry line remains. She squeezes his hands. “Of course I’m happy to see you, bug. I’m always happy to see you. You can stay anytime you want. You wanna come sit and watch some TV with us?”

“No, actually I think I’m just gonna go to bed now. I’m really beat.”

“Okay,” May says, the worry line deepening. “Well, you just tell me if you need anything, alright?”

“Yeah. Thanks, May.” Peter bends to kiss her cheek. “Night. See you in the morning.”

“Good night, honey.”

“Night, Mr. Stark.”

“Night, kid,” Tony says. “Hey, real quick—you want a live band at this party?”

“Oh my god. May, stop him, _please,_ ” Peter begs, beating a swift retreat to his old bedroom.

He feels like he’s barely crawled into bed when there’s a soft knock at the bedroom door, and then Tony is poking his head in.

“Hey, kid, you awake in here?”

“No,” Peter replies, burrowing deeper under the comforter.

Tony comes in anyway.

“Your aunt fell asleep on me. You get a glass of wine in her these days after nine and she’s out like a light.” He pats Peter’s leg. “Scooch over.”

Peter reluctantly shuffles over until he’s lying against the wall. Tony stretches out in the bed next to him in a process involving a great deal of cracking joints and sighing, and then lies there on his back with his eyes closed in total silence for a long time.

Peter is starting to think the man’s fallen asleep when Tony suddenly rolls onto his side towards Peter and props himself up on an elbow. 

“Hi, pumpkin pie,” Tony says.

“Hi,” Peter replies warily.

“Chocolate? Or vanilla?” Tony asks. “Or maybe you want to get a little weird?”

Peter pulls the comforter up under his chin. “Excuse me?”

“The cake for your graduation party,” Tony clarifies.

“Oh.” Peter shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. “Um. I honestly don’t care. Whatever you want is fine.”

Tony makes a clucking sound with his tongue. “This is _your_ party. I’m not choosing the cake for your party.”

Peter groans. “Okay. Fine. I want whatever cake Morgan wants, then. Let her choose.”

“Alright, so you want to get a little weird. I respect that,” Tony says. He pulls his phone and a pair of reading glasses out of his jacket pocket, sliding the glasses on. “Now, since I finally have you captive—let’s go over this invitation list Pepper sent me. It’s about five miles long, and we really should have sent out invitations last month. Let’s see—we got the usual crowd at the top, Ned and your idiot roommate and your scary leftist girlfriend—”

“No,” Peter interrupts.

Tony looks at him over the top of his glasses, eyebrows raised. “No?”

“No, she’s not coming. And I don’t want to talk about it so don’t ask, okay?”

Tony takes his glasses off. “You know, relationships are really hard, even when one partner isn’t constantly putting themselves in mortal danger—”

“I just said I didn’t want to talk about it. Jeez. Can you listen to me for once?”

“Alright, we won’t talk about it,” Tony says, slipping his glasses back on and squinting at the phone. “Where were we...”

“Can we just do a really small party?” Peter asks, laying an arm across his eyes. “Like just family and close friends kind of thing? That way if something goes wrong I’ll only disappoint a handful of people.”

Tony makes a little unhappy noise. “Hey, what have we said about that kind of negative talk? You gotta say one nice thing about yourself now.”

“Mr. Stark, _please_ —”

“Uh-uh, you know the rule. Let me hear it.”

Peter sighs. “Ugh, god, fine. Um…okay, I’m a really hard worker—not that that matters, because everyone apparently thinks I’m some kind of delinquent or something.”

“What is going on right now? Why are you so worried about what other people think?”

Peter sighs again, grinding his fists into his eyes. “It’s…I dunno…this is so stupid, but when I was a kid, I was really small—”

“You’re still really small,” Tony interrupts. “I’ve seen bags of dog food at the grocery store that are bigger than you are.”

“First of all, you’ve never set foot inside of a grocery store in your _life._ And secondly, I’m trying to be emotionally vulnerable right now and it’s really hard, and you’re pretty much bullying me.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. The weed makes me blunt.” Tony pauses, then chuckles to himself. “Get it? _Blunt._ ”

“Okay, never mind,” Peter says, rolling away to face the wall. “None of this is important. I’m just gonna go to sleep.”

“Hey, no. I’m being a dick. I’m really sorry,” Tony says, tugging Peter back over. “Come on. I’m just trying to put you at ease, that’s all. It’s just me.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t know what I was trying to say,” Peter says, rubbing at this face again. “I’m just really tired and—actually, can we talk about this guest list for the party?”

“Sure, if you want to.”

“You said it was really long, but I don’t know that many people.”

“Well, there are some people that May knows on there, and some people that I know. I gotta remind that asshole Reed Richards that all the intellectual property contained in that big brain of yours rightfully belongs to SI. I know he’s been trying to recruit you to the Future Foundation behind my back. And we want to show you off and brag a little, okay?”

“About what? I’m barely graduating. My GPA is garbage.”

Tony shrugs. “So what? We know what a smart kid you are.”

“Maybe, but—seriously, how many people do I know on that list?” Peter asks, twisting the comforter around his hands.

Tony shrugs again. “Why does it matter? You said you wanted just close friends and family to come, so that’s what we’ll do.”

“Yeah, but _who_ is that?” Peter presses. “My friends—Ned?”

“Yes, Ned. Ned’s great,” Tony says. “We love Ned. What’s wrong with Ned?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Ned. But Ned is _leaving_ in a month. Ned is going to California for a job—a really great job, where he’s going to meet new people and have a new life. I won’t see Ned anymore, except like, maybe at Christmas or something. And MJ…she’s leaving, too.”

“Is that what you’re upset about?”

“No. Yes. It’s—“ Peter takes a deep breath, trying to find the words to explain. “I’m graduating, and it’s like I just realized that I went to college for four years, and I didn’t make any friends the whole time I was there. Not one.”

“Sure you did,” Tony insists. “What about…”

He trails off, clearly struggling.

“See? You can’t think of anyone,” Peter says, feeling pinched somewhere deep inside.

“I can. I’ve just had a few glasses of wine. My memory is a little foggy right now, is all. I was gonna say that little shit Harry, but I suppose that sort of spectacularly crashed and burned, so...What about…what about that reckless idiot you live with, huh? You met Johnny in college.”

“No, he doesn’t count. We went to college together, but really I met him through our shared work stuff,” Peter argues. “I’m talking about like, _normal_ people, you know? Like, Ned is the only normal person that I’ve somehow managed to maintain a relationship with, but maybe that’s just because he knew me before Spider-Man, or because he’s been in Boston, or…I don’t know. But MJ—” he stops a moment, the pinch worsening—“MJ broke up with me, and Gwen can’t stand me, and Harry stole a bunch of my stuff, and I’m feeling like I’m going to die alone—”

“Hold up,” Tony cuts in, raising a hand and frowning at Peter. “Harry stole a bunch of your stuff? When?”

“Um. Today.”

Tony sits up. “What? What did he take?”

“Like, _everything._ Clothes, money, the tablet you got me, all my cameras…everything. He even…” Peter swallows down the lump in his throat, “…he even took my uncle Ben’s watch.”

“Oh, kid,” Tony says, his face falling. “Did you call the police?”

“No. I don’t want the police involved,” Peter says firmly. “I don’t want him to go to jail. I know he’s awful, but it’s not his fault. He’s sick. And anyway, he’s probably already sold it all for drugs, so what’s the point?”

“Okay,” Tony says, getting up and walking towards the bedroom door. “No police. No problem. I’ll take care of it for you.”

Peter frowns, a little coil of trepidation tightening in his stomach. “How?”

“You know, just a little intimidation. Some slight bodily harm, if necessary. I just gotta run home for a suit first.”

“ _What?_ ” Peter throws the comforter off and leaps out of bed, grabbing Tony. “Are you crazy?”

“No, I’m _very_ pissed,” Tony says, trying to push past Peter.

“You are _retired,_ ” Peter reminds him, holding Tony back by the arms. “You can’t just go around threatening civilians.”

“Wrong. If you’re rich and beloved, they let you get away with anything,” Tony says. “Including murder. Now move.”

“Will you please calm down?” Peter begs. “Seriously. Don’t make me pick you up again—it’s embarrassing for both of us. Listen—I don’t need you to take care of this for me. And I don’t need you to—to put money in my account whenever you feel like it, or fly some crazy drone into a park because you think I need rescuing. You _cannot_ do stuff like that.”

“Sure I can. It’s easy. I can do both of those things from my phone while I’m brushing my teeth.”

“That’s not the point,” Peter says, frustrated. “That’s not what I need.”

Tony stops trying to push past him, his expression going soft. “Okay. Okay, so—tell me what you need. Anything. Just name it.”

Peter releases a long breath, his shoulders sagging.

“I think I just really need to sleep,” he says finally.

“Okay, yeah. I think that’s a good place to start,” Tony agrees, gently squeezing Peter’s shoulders. 

Somewhere in the near distance, a siren starts wailing. Another joins a moment later, and then several more start up, adding to the cacophony. 

Peter looks towards the window, grimacing. “Never mind. I gotta go.”

Tony squeezes his shoulders again. “You could just leave it, just this once. Let the cops handle it.”

But Peter shakes his head. “You know I can’t.”

“I know,” Tony replies, reluctantly releasing him. “Alright. Don’t forget about our dinner plans Friday night. Be safe out there, kid. I’m gonna be really upset if I have to cancel this party after all the work I’ve put into it.”

“I will be, I promise,” Peter says, flashing him a tired smile as he digs his Spidey suit out of his backpack. He yanks it on, then slides the window open and leaps out into the muggy darkness beyond, swinging towards whatever crisis awaiting him.

***

“You look terrible,” Gwen observes later that week, when Peter arrives a half-hour late to meet her at the library to work on their final lab project. “Why do you always look so terrible?”

Peter doesn’t even bother trying to come up with an excuse. “Well...I picked up this really bad stomach virus a couple weeks ago while crawling around in a sewer, and a guy fleeing the cops ran me over with his truck, and then I've spent the last several nights getting shot at by a variety of gang members.”

Gwen stares across the table at him for a very long moment, before sighing and going back to typing on her laptop. “Peter, I really worry about you.”

Peter blinks at her. “You—you worry about me?”

“I mean, yeah, sure,” Gwen says briskly as she continues typing. “I feel like you need someone in your life who worries about you, because clearly no one else is. So. That’s all. Okay?”

“Yeah. I, uh. I appreciate that,” Peter tells her. He wets his lips with his tongue, hesitating, before asking, “Hey, that thing you said the other day, about our classmates not wanting to be stuck with me—is that true?”

Gwen’s typing falters.

“Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. That was really mean,” she replies, clearly flustered. “I was frustrated with you, and it just—came out.”

“It’s okay. I know I can be really frustrating—I don’t blame you,” Peter assures her quickly. “I just really wanna know—is it true?”

Gwen looks up from her laptop, her expression softening. “You’re really nice, Peter. You’re nice and you’re _so_ smart, and you seem like a really good person despite…whatever it is that’s going on with you. People say stupid things because they don’t know you. That’s all. But we’re graduating, so none of it matters, anyway.”

Peter nods, giving her a weak smile. “Yeah, you’re right. I was just…curious. That’s all.”

“Okay.” Gwen clears her throat. “Anyway—this project is due tomorrow, you’re already late, and I’d really like to try to get a good chunk of this done this morning before you disappear off to do god only knows what, so…”

“Right. Sorry,” Peter says, scrambling to pull his battered laptop out of his bag, along with her notes he’d borrowed. He hands them back to her. “Here. Thanks again for letting me borrow them.”

“No problem,” Gwen replies, before giving him a hard look over the top of her glasses. “Did you hold up your end of the bargain? ‘Cause I already promised my cousin that Johnny Storm is going to be at his party.”

Peter starts to sweat again. He swallows hard. “Um…no…but I’ll talk to him as soon as we’re done here, I swear.”

Gwen sighs, her shoulders collapsing. “You make it really hard to be your friend sometimes, Peter. I can’t believe I was just defending you. I suppose this is partially my fault—I know better than to trust you to actually follow through with something.”

Peter doesn’t even hear the rest of what she says. “You just said that we’re friends. You admitted it. It’s official.”

Gwen sighs again. 

“Oh my god, you are _so_ sad. Okay, listen—if it helps you to actually finish this project on time and deliver Johnny Storm to my cousin’s birthday, then yes, we can be best friends forever,” she says, before leaning towards him and pointing a threatening finger at his face. “But if you fuck this up, then you will become my sworn mortal enemy for life, and I will do everything in my power to utterly destroy you, you understand?”

“I won’t fuck it up,” Peter promises, elated.

***

He’s still buoyed by that elation a couple of hours later when he arrives back home at his apartment, nearly taking the door off its hinges in his rush to get inside and hunt down his roommate.

He finds Johnny in their cramped kitchen, dressed in his uniform and cramming a turkey sandwich into his mouth.

“Oh no, are you leaving on a mission right now?” Peter asks, eyeing the uniform with a sinking feeling.

“Yep,” Johnny replies around a huge mouthful of turkey. “But it’s a quickie. I’ll be back this evening.”

Peter lets out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank god, ‘cause I need a favor. I need you to go to Gwen Stacy’s cousin’s eighth birthday party on Saturday. I promised her you would be there, and if you don’t show she will seriously murder me. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

“Sure, I’ll do it,” Johnny says, brushing crumbs off of his uniform.

“You will?” Peter asks, a little incredulous about how easy that was.

“Yeah, man. I’m always happy to help you out. Only—I need a favor in return.”

“Okay, yeah, sure, anything. What do you need?”

Johnny sidles up to him with a predatory grin. “I need you to throw that sexy little Stark suit on right now and come fight robots in California with me.”

“Absolutely not,” Peter says flatly. “I promised May I’d stay away from anything dangerous until after I graduate, and I really need to finish this final lab project today. It’s due in the morning.”

“Come on,” Johnny wheedles. “It’s not gonna be _that_ dangerous. Come with me. I never see you anymore. I love you. I miss you.”

“What are you talking about, you never see me? We’ve live together, you idiot.”

“But we haven’t fought robots together in ages. You love fighting robots.”

“No I don’t. I _hate_ fighting robots.”

“Well, I love watching you fight robots,” Johnny amends. “The way you punch through their metal bodies like they’re made of tissue paper while you’re wearing that sexy little Stark suit is mm—” he kisses the tips of his fingers—“spectacular.”

“Would you _please_ stop calling it my ‘sexy little Stark suit’,” Peter begs. “Every time you do I feel like Iron Man is going to bust through the wall and blow our heads off.”

“I for one would be honored to have my face melted by Iron Man,” Johnny says. “But seriously, please come. Sue’s got the flu so it’s just gonna be me and Ben and Reed. It’ll get done so much faster if you come.”

Peter shakes his head. “No. No, no. I made a promise to my aunt. I can’t go.”

He turns on his heel to leave, already trying to think of how the hell he’s going to get Captain America to agree to come to an eight-year-old’s birthday party.

“Reed wants you to come,” Johnny adds.

Peter reluctantly stops, turning around. “He does? Really?”

“Yeah, man. He’s always going on and on about you. You know he wants you to join the Future Foundation. We could be the _Fantastic Five._ Sounds good, right?”

“Ugh,” Peter says, feeling his resolve weakening. “I’m supposed to have dinner with Mr. Stark tonight. He wants to finalize plans for this dumb party. It’s all he talks about. He’s putting so much time and effort into it—I _cannot_ cancel on him. You have to promise me we’ll be back in time.”

“We’re taking the jet,” Johnny says, putting an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “We’ll be in and out. You can work on your project on the way there, and you’ll be home in time for dinner with Mother. Everything will be fine, I promise. It’ll be fun.”

***

Fighting robots is not fun.

Fighting robots is terrifying and exhausting and just the _worst._

It wouldn’t be so bad, Peter thinks as he weaves in and out of the way of explosions and horrifying flesh-vaporizing lasers, if there weren’t quite so many of them and if they were maybe slightly less intent on completely leveling Silicon Valley. They are also definitely not tissue-paper punchable, as Peter’s bruised and bleeding knuckles would attest.

“Is that vibranium?” Peter asks, panting and clutching at a painful stitch in his side. He needs to sleep more. Maybe eat healthier, or at least more regularly.

“The density and melting-point suggests adamantium,” Reed replies thoughtfully, as if they’re just having a chat in the lab rather than in the middle of battle. It’s the sort of badass calm Peter could only dream of possessing himself.

“No one told me these were gonna be adamantium robots. I feel misled,” Peter complains, jumping back into the fray only to take a direct hit to the face that knocks him flat and has him seeing stars.

“Look alive, kid,” Ben says as he stomps by, picking Peter up by the scruff of his neck like he’s a puppy and setting him back on his feet. “Job ain’t done yet.”

“I hate this. I hate fighting robots,” Peter says, raising his mask to his nose in order to spit a mouthful of blood and a tooth out into his palm. A _tooth._ He stares at it, feeling a mix of outrage and horror. He jabs a finger at Johnny as he swoops low over his head in a streak of white hot light. “I hate _you._ ”

“Love you, too!” Johnny shouts back, incinerating a drone taking aim at a group of lab techs cowering behind a vegan smoothie stand.

It’s late afternoon before they’re finally finished. Peter sits on the curb next to the smoldering husk of a car, probing with his tongue at the tender, empty socket where his top right incisor used to be. Someone’s given him a green smoothie that he can’t bring himself to drink because it reminds him too much of raw sewage, and he’s already feeling vaguely queasy as he thinks of May and her much-longed-for nice graduation pictures.

“Are we leaving soon?” he asks as Johnny touches down next to him with a gust of hot air. “I’d really like to be on time for dinner with Mr. Stark for once.”

Johnny looks sheepish. “Uh, yeah, you might be a little late.”

Peter glares at him. “Why?”

“The jet is toast. Some of the drones got to it.”

“Toast?” Peter repeats, jerking upright and spilling smoothie over his hand. “What does that mean?”

“It means it’s _toast._ A giant, melted, gutted piece of toast.”

“Oh no. No—my laptop was on there. My final lab project…” Peter says faintly, dropping the smoothie to clutch at his head, feeling seconds away from a complete mental breakdown. 

“Yeah, but you backed up a copy of it, right?”

“I was _going_ to, but the wifi at our apartment has been crappy, and then at the library this morning I forgot because I was distracted thinking about that stupid birthday party,” Peter mumbles, feeling lightheaded. “Oh god, this is it. My life is over. I’m gonna fail this lab. I won’t be able to graduate. I’m gonna disappoint May and Mr. Stark and—god, _Gwen_ —she’s going to actually murder me, which honestly is probably a mercy because if I don’t graduate, then I can’t go to grad school, and if I can’t get into grad school, I’ll never get a real job and I’m going to struggle the rest of my life and die alone, and—”

Johnny interrupts his babbling, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. “Pete, calm down. It’s going to be fine. You can handle this.”

“How?” Peter asks hopelessly.

“You’ll figure something out. You’re a little mini genius. You can do anything.”

Peter says nothing to that because there’s an achy tightness in his chest and he doesn’t trust himself to be able to speak without starting to cry, and even if he could, he doesn’t know how to explain that he doesn’t want to be a genius or figure anything out—that he just wants to be _normal_ and have a normal life, without lizard-men or genocidal aliens or fleets of weaponized drones, even if only for a few days. Just so that he could have a chance to catch his breath.

***

Peter winds up being two hours late to dinner, which is actually not the latest he’s ever been, but does absolutely nothing to change the fact that he’s going to have to somehow break the news that he won’t be graduating like everyone has planned for.

“I guess I don’t need to ask how your little field trip to California went,” Tony says when Peter, jet-lagged and bedraggled and with one-eye swollen shut, finally drops into the booth across the table from him.

“Please don’t,” Peter says heavily. “I am hungry and tired and in pain.”

Tony dips a napkin into his glass of water and hands it to Peter. “Here. You have blood all over your chin. I went ahead and ordered you a burger.”

Peter wipes at his chin, grimacing. “Can I order another? I’m seriously starving.”

“Order whatever you want,” Tony says, frowning at Peter. “I thought this is why you prefer to stick to the neighborhood.”

“I _do,_ ” Peter says, pressing the napkin against his throbbing eye. “But Reed asked me to come.”

“Oh, well, if _Reed Richards_ asked,” Tony says sardonically. “And how come he gets to be Reed but I’m still Mr. Stark? Makes me feel like I’m the old, obsolete model of genius being replaced by the cool new model. Don’t forget your _my_ protege. I have a lot of hopes and dreams pinned on you.”

“God, please stop. I can’t handle this right now,” Peter begs, tearing open a sugar packet with shaky hands and downing it like a shot. “I need some real, solid food before I can carry the crushing weight of your expectations.”

“What’s the matter with you? You’re very on edge tonight. Did something happen in California?”

“No.” Peter drums his fingers in a rapid tattoo against the table top, feeling like stress is vibrating across the entire surface of his body like a buzzing swarm of bees. “Actually, yes. I have a serious problem.”

“How serious are we talking? Like that time you threw up with the mask on right before you had to give a presentation in class, or like you need me to hide a body?”

“I dunno, where does this fall on the scale?” 

Peter smiles at Tony, poking his tongue through the bloody gap where his tooth used to be.

Tony’s face shifts through a whole spectrum of expressions in a matter of seconds, starting with horror and ending with resignation. He presses his hands against his eyes. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I’m the one missing the tooth. But, hey, watch this,” Peter says, sticking the straw in his drink through the gap in his teeth and sucking up a swig of Coke. 

Tony isn’t amused by Peter’s little trick. “I’m on heart medication because of you, you know, because of all the stress you put me through.”

Peter sits back, feeling sour. “Yeah, I know. You remind me like once a week. Sorry. I’m not trying to ruin your retirement on purpose.”

“Yeah, who’s feeling sorry for themselves now, huh?” Tony asks dryly.

That hurts, for some reason, and Peter feels that achy tightness in his chest return. “Yeah, well, I think I’m allowed to feel a little sorry for myself sometimes. I’m like— _killing_ myself to keep everyone happy and everything just—just goes wrong all the time, and—”

“Pete, buddy—the table,” Tony interrupts.

“What?”

“The _table,_ Petey.”

Peter looks down and realizes he’s gripping the table so hard the cheap plastic is warping and splintering under his grip. He jerks his hands away, mortified. “Oh. Oh no.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony says, waving a hand. “I’ll leave a big tip. And don’t worry about the tooth—I’ll find someone who can fix it. Just smile with your lips closed when we take pictures at your graduation.”

Peter involuntarily lets out a little grief-stricken sound at that.

Tony frowns at him again. “What’s that? What’s going on right now?”

“Nothing.”

“Mm,” Tony says, nodding and looking at Peter with a slightly dubious expression.

“Would you stop looking at me like that,” Peter says crossly, tearing apart his napkin. 

“Like what?” Tony asks, eyebrows raised.

“Like you’re disappointed in me.”

“Disappointed? Kid, I’m not disappointed,” Tony says. “That look I’m giving you is _worried_. It’s _concern_ for your well-being, Peter. If you’re seeing disappointment, it’s because you’re projecting your own insecurities. I’ve never been disappointed in you ever.”

Peter scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Give me a break. You definitely have been.”

“When?” Tony asks, looking affronted. “Give me one example.”

“How about that time I fucked up that ferry when I was fifteen, and you took the suit?”

“Not disappointed. I was pissed, I was scared, but I wasn’t disappointed.”

“ _Bullshit._ ”

“Nope,” Tony says, calmly taking a sip of water. “Try again.”

“Okay,” Peter says, still aggressively shredding his napkin into smaller and smaller pieces. “How about when I got into MIT but went to Empire State instead?”

Tony shakes his head. “Not disappointed.”

Peter gives him an incredulous look. “You didn’t talk to me for like a _month._ ”

“I was grieving, Peter—that’s not the same as disappointment,” Tony says, like he’s explaining something to a five-year-old. “It grieved me that you decided not to go. But I’ve accepted it now. We wouldn’t be able to have these nice talks over dinner where you act inexplicably confrontational nearly as often if you were in Boston.”

“This is revisionist history,” Peter protests. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

“Well, memory is a funny thing,” Tony says with finality, as the waiter brings their plates over and sets them on the table. “But let’s move on. This is supposed to be a fun dinner where we discuss your graduation party. Aren’t you looking forward to that?”

Peter stops with his burger hovering halfway to his mouth, his hunger transformed into a nausea so intense it borders on painful, and then maybe because he’s tired, or maybe just because the universe seems to enjoy dumping even more garbage onto the dumpster fire of his life, he starts to cry. It’s not even the slightly-uncomfortable-but-still-socially-acceptable silent weeping-type crying, either. He’s completely crumpling in the booth, sobbing messily as he drops the burger back onto the plate.

“Holy hell,” Tony says, alarmed. “What just happened? What’s wrong?”

“This burger has onions on it,” Peter says. His nose is running and he can’t even blow it because he shredded his stupid napkin, and for some reason that feels like a completely world-ending catastrophe. He’s crying so hard now he starts gagging.

Tony gets up and comes around the table, sliding into the booth next to Peter. He puts an arm around Peter, patting his back and making a shushing sound.

“Are you _shushing_ me?” Peter chokes out.

“Listen, I have no idea what I’m doing. This worked on Morgan sometimes when she’d have a meltdown.”

“I’m not having a meltdown,” Peter says shakily, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I’m having an existential crisis or something.”

“Because they got your burger order wrong?” Tony asks, incredulous. “That doesn’t seem a little ridiculous to you? Because it seems a little ridiculous to me.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve cried about a lot dumber things than this, believe me,” Peter says, hiccuping. “This isn’t even the first public breakdown I’ve had this month.”

“You’re breaking my heart, kid.” Tony tugs on the back of Peter’s collar, looking down his shirt. “Do you have a factory reset button somewhere? You seem to be malfunctioning a lot these days. Maybe we need to do a hard reboot.”

“I know you’re trying to make me laugh and it’s not gonna work,” Peter says, still swallowing down sobs. “I am so... _done._ ”

“Alright. In that case, let’s get out of here,” Tony says, taking out his wallet and sliding a few crisp hundred dollar bills under one of the untouched plates. He slides out of the booth, tugging Peter with him. “I can’t have pictures showing up in the tabloids tomorrow of me with some sobbing twenty-something-year-old kid. I’ve just finally become respectable in the eyes of the public.”

“Sorry,” Peter mumbles, realizing that he’s ruined their dinner.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony says, steering him out the door and towards his car. 

Peter manages to more-or-less collect himself by the time Tony puts the car in park in front of Peter’s apartment building, and he’s almost grateful for the bone-deep exhaustion that seems to permanently inhabit his body these days because it means he’s too tired and numb to feel the crippling embarrassment he’d otherwise be experiencing over the incident in the diner.

“Are you sure I can’t convince you to come home with me?” Tony asks as they sit in the parked car. “I know Morgan would love to watch Disney princess movies with you until your eyes bleed. You can take a little break from studying and sleep over, and maybe we can all go out for breakfast in the morning?”

Peter hesitates a moment, considering. The invitation is painfully tempting. He wants to be fifteen again, when Spider-Man was still new and exciting and his friends thought his hero gig was cool and not yet a burden that strained their relationships, when the world felt less complicated and his trajectory into the future clearly plotted out—college and then grad school and then a career and maybe a family, and all those other distant grown up milestones that everyone else around him seems to be falling so seamlessly into, yet continue to elude him.

“No, it’s okay. I’m okay now. Sorry about dinner,” Peter says instead, reaching for the door handle, then hesitating again.

“I wasn’t crying about the burger,” he adds. “Not really.”

Tony reaches over and wraps a hand around Peter’s arm, squeezing gently. “I know.”

“It was just a weird stress thing, ’cause of finals and graduation and stuff, and I haven’t slept in like, eight years and I’ve been really tired lately. But I’m okay now. Everything’s okay.”

“Hey, listen—I know it’s really easy to lose yourself in this whole superhero thing, and it’s even more thankless when you’re trying to protect your identity and live a more-or-less normal life, too. I know it gets really lonely out there sometimes. But we’re always rooting for you, Pete,” Tony says. “You’ve always got people in your corner, no matter what. Okay? ”

Peter nods, not trusting himself to speak. His eyes are full of tears again and it makes the light of the street lamps look smeary and stretched when he turns his face away to look out the window, blinking rapidly.

“Okay,” he says, taking a steadying breath before opening the door.

***

Peter makes his way back upstairs to his apartment, and then heads straight for the fridge. He pulls out one of the packs of Red Bull his roommate keeps on the bottom shelf, setting it down on the counter. Then he starts opening the cans and chugging them down, one-by-one.

He’s about halfway through the pack when Johnny wanders into the kitchen, looking unfairly untouched by the earlier chaos of the day.

Johnny looks from Peter to the empty cans of Red Bull on the countertop, eyebrows raised. “Dude, slow down. How many of those have you had?”

“Five so far,” Peter says, gulping down another can. “But I don’t really start to feel it till after the fourth, so I’m probably gonna have to drink your whole pack. Sorry—it’s a dumb metabolism thing. I’ll buy you more next time I get paid.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Johnny says, a frown line appearing between his brows. “Why exactly are you chugging twelve Red Bulls in a single sitting?”

“This is my Hail Mary,” Peter explains, setting down the empty can and cracking open another. “I have exactly nine hours and twenty-three minutes to replicate two weeks worth of experiments, collect and analyze the data, and write a thoughtful, cohesive lab report evaluating my results, so I can pass this lab and graduate. If I don’t succeed, I’m at least going to die trying.”

Johnny claps Peter on the back, grinning. “Okay, this is the kind of proactive, slightly crazy, living right-on-the-edge Peter Parker I know and love. I’m thrilled to have my boy back. But also—dude, put that shit down before you kill yourself. You don’t have to do this. I got your back.” 

He whips a USB stick out of his back pocket and presents it with a flourish. “Ta-da!”

Peter stares at it. “What’s that?”

“It’s all the data for your stupid project,” Johnny says, tossing the stick at Peter. 

Peter catches it and holds it reverently. “You—how did—?”

“I didn’t do anything, really. Well, I spent like two hours digging around the wreckage of the jet to find your laptop. It was totally burnt to a crisp, but I took it to Reed, and he managed to salvage your files through necromancy or the dark arts or some shit,” Johnny explains. 

“That’s...wow,” Peter says dumbly, looking at the USB. Then he flings his arms around Johnny, nearly lifting him off the ground.

“Ow, ribs,” Johnny wheezes. “You are so small but so strong.”

“Oh god! Sorry!” Peter says, loosening his hold slightly. “Sorry, I’m just so—Johnny, you saved me.”

Johnny grins. “Sure. It’s kinda what I do. Big time hero, ya know?”

“Seriously, thank you,” Peter says, on the verge of tears again. “I’ve been...kinda having a hard time lately, so. Yeah.”

“Hey, I know, and I get it. Trying to do all this superhero stuff while going to school sucks, and I don’t even have to deal with the whole secret identity thing, or people expecting me to be the next Tony Stark or Reed Richards or whatever,” Johnny says. “ I dunno how you do it, man, but I really admire it.”

It might be the most astute thing Peter has ever heard Johnny say, and it both surprises him and feels profoundly humanizing. For a moment, Peter can't do anything but blink up at him, deeply touched.

Then Johnny leans forward and kisses him, breaking the moment.

“Uh...what was that?” Peter asks when they part.

“I thought you wanted me to kiss you,” Johnny explains. “You were standing there with your arms around me, looking deep into my eyes for like half-a-minute, like you were waiting for me to make a move or something. And I figured I should go for it, ‘cause I felt kinda bad about letting Harry into the apartment to rob you, and the whole tooth thing, and the laptop, and you’re sad and single now, and I know you’ve always had a little bit of thing for me.”

“Not...really?” Peter says skeptically, before grimacing. “Oh god, did that come across as insulting? Because I don’t _not_ find you attractive—I mean, you are...wow, just so genetically blessed, and okay, sure, I maybe have had some...private, alone-time thoughts about you here and there, but—sorry, jeez, I’m making this _so_ much more awkward than it already is...just...I don’t mean to presume, but you’ve always seemed... _aggressively_ heterosexual, so I never really seriously considered it, that’s all.”

“True, I love and respect the ladies,” Johnny says. “But if it would cheer you up, I’d be totally willing to pinch hit for the other team. I’d do anything for you, Pete. You’re like a brother to me—but you know, like…a step-brother or something, and our parents married late in life so we weren’t raised together and it wouldn’t be like, weird or gross if we boned.”

“Yeah, no—that would still be super weird and gross, but I understand what you’re trying to say and I really appreciate the sentiment, thanks,” Peter says. “But right now I have _got_ to finish this lab report. If you really want to help me, you’ll leave me alone unless the sun implodes and we’re literally minutes from death, alright? Also—I need to borrow your laptop.”

Johnny gives him a salute. “You got it, captain.”

A few hours later, around midnight, Gwen sends him a text:

_PETER where is the report????????_

_almost done,_ he types back.

 _IT IS DUE AT 8 AM,_ Gwen responds. _why isn’t it done????_

Once again, Peter doesn’t even bother trying to come up with a lie. 

_left my laptop on an airplane. then drones blew the airplane up_ , he types to her, adding a few sad faced emojis for effect.

It takes Gwen a few minutes to respond to that.

 _ok, u know what? I’ll give credit for creativity_ , her message reads, somehow managing to convey via text her total exhaustion and disdain for him.

 _thx i’ll email report soonish_ , he types back, before tossing his phone onto the coffee table and getting back down to business.

***

Peter does get the report done, with about four hours to spare. He’s a little cross-eyed by the time he finishes typing the lab report, and there’s a weird metallic taste in his mouth that he suspects has something to do with all the Red Bull he drank, but it’s done. He emails it to Gwen and then collapses face-first into the couch, falling asleep the second his face mashes into the cushion.

He wakes sometime around noon with his cheek pressed into a sticky puddle of saliva and one arm numb from being trapped under the dead weight of his body. He grabs his phone off of the coffee table to check the time, blinking groggily at the screen. There’s a text message from Gwen, sent around six-thirty that morning:

_got the lab report thanks_

Then, about an hour later, several more from her:

Gwen: _ok this looks really good_  
Gwen: _REALLY good_  
Gwen: _it’s depressing that you’re this smart but u waste it_  
Gwen: _pls get help. get your life in order_  
Gwen: _im begging as your BFF_

Peter gives his phone a satisfied, lop-sided smile, and then collapses back into the couch, asleep.

***

The universe must feel just a tiny bit of pity for him, because aside from a few routine car jackings and an attempted mugging, the city is quiet and peaceful for the next two weeks. Peter breezes through finals, then does nothing but sleep and binge watch Netflix in that blessed downtime between his _final_ final exam and graduation. 

Tony, on the other hand, keeps busy during this time putting the finishing touches on his party. The night before graduation, he sends Peter several texts: 

Tony: _hi kid_  
Tony: _minor problem with the party_  
Tony: _bakery made ladyfingers instead of sfogliatella_  
Tony: _is that ok?_

_???? I don’t even know what that is_

Tony: _an Italian pastry. Google it._

Tony: _Peter_  
Tony: _is it okay?_

_YES OKAY I am SLEEPING_

Tony: _okay night kid_

Tony: _it’s morning now so I can officially say happy graduation day P. You did it._  
Tony: _but stop growing up now._  
Tony: _you’ve made your point. that’s enough._  
Tony: _really I'm very emotionally distressed right now._  
Tony: _I’m having Regrets._  
Tony: _did I give you enough support?_  
Tony: _do you feel like I gave you enough support?_

_IT IS 3 AM WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU_ _r u smoking pot again??_

Tony: _idk r u a cop_

_good NIGHT MR STARK_

Tony: _ok see you in a few hours_  
Tony: _love you buddy_

_yeah ok god pls STOP_

Tony: _one more thing about the party…_

_NO_

Tony: _just kidding. relax_

***

The merciful streak continues into the morning of his graduation, when Peter actually wakes up on time for once in his life and is ready, showered and teeth-brushed and dressed in cap and gown, when Happy and May arrive to pick him up and shepherd him to the ceremony.

He endures several minutes of May exuberantly kissing and hugging him on the curb in front of the building before she and Happy depart to find parking, leaving him to join the sea of black-clad fellow graduates milling around inside awaiting further instructions.

“Hey, Peter!” 

Peter turns and sees Gwen striding towards him, somehow managing to still look imposing even while wearing a robe and mortarboard cap. 

“Hey,” she says again as she comes to a stop in front of him, actually smiling now. “We got an A on our lab project. So. That’s cool. Sorry if I was kind of mean about it. I feel a little bad now. You look terrible again, by the way.”

“Wow,” Peter says, returning her smile. “Thanks. You look great.”

“So,” Gwen says, folding her arms across her chest. “What’s your excuse this time?”

Peter blinks. “My excuse?”

Gwen points to his mouth. “You’re missing a tooth.”

“Oh. Right. Uh…”

“Wait,” Gwen says, holding up a hand. “Let me try.”

“O-okay,” Peter replies, uncertainly.

Gwen studies him for a long moment, tapping a finger to her lips thoughtfully. Then, “You’re a crime-fighting masked vigilante.”

Peter feels like the floor just dropped out from under him. “I—what?”

“Yeah,” Gwen says, rocking forward on her toes with a knowing smile. “I figured out your secret.”

“My…my secret?” Peter squeaks out.

“Uh-huh. You’re a mild-mannered student by day, but at night you dress up in a red suit and beat up bad guys.”

Peter thinks he might be dying. His heart feels like it’s about to pound right through his ribcage and he’s lightheaded and his stomach is turning itself inside out and _oh my god, she knows, she knows she knowssheknowssheknows_ — 

“You’re Daredevil,” Gwen finishes.

The world abruptly rights itself.

“Ha, wow, you really did figure it out,” Peter says weakly. “I’ll admit it. That’s me—good ol’ Double D. I guess it’s pretty obvious now, right? I totally look like a guy who breaks bad dudes’ bones on a nightly basis. ”

“Oh, definitely.” Gwen gives him a sardonic wink. “But don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“That’s—a relief, thank you,” Peter says. “Um, can you excuse me for just one sec? I’m just gonna run to the bathroom real quick before the ceremony starts...”

Peter heads to the unisex single-stall restroom at the opposite end of the hall at what he hopes is a casual pace, slips inside and carefully locks the door behind him, and then spends the next minute dry-heaving over the sink.

“God, what am I doing,” he mutters, pressing his hands against his eyes. He’s always going to feel like this, he realizes—the constant, exhausting feeling that he’s always teetering right on the edge of something collapsing. All because of this stupid secret identity thing and his dumb, dangerous life and his complete inability to keep his shit together.

“Okay, okay, stop, you idiot,” he tells his reflection in the mirror. “You made it. You just have to get through this ceremony like a normal person, _please,_ you can do this. Just be normal for like two hours.”

He splashes some water on his face and takes a few deep, composing breaths before exiting the restroom.

He comes back to find his fellow graduates-to-be standing in little clusters with their noses shoved in their phones, their faces alight with a mixture of alarm and excitement.

Peter finds Gwen again, who is staring at her own phone, her brows knit together.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“Some guy in like a mech suit or something just robbed a bank a few blocks away from here,” Gwen explains, holding her phone so that Peter can see the live news feed playing on the screen. 

“What?” Peter leans in closer, watching as a man in what looks like a mechanical octopus suit comes into frame and uses a robotic tentacle to hurl a car at a pair of police officers, who barely scrabble away in time to avoid being crushed.

Gwen gasps. “Oh my god—is that Dr. Octavius?” 

“You have got to be shitting me,” Peter says, his heart sinking. He thinks of May sitting in the auditorium, waiting to see him graduate, and the promise he’s made her. He feels like he’s standing on the edge of some great precipice, trying to decide if he’s going to jump or not, but already knowing, deep down, that he made his choice a long time ago.

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure that’s him,” he tells Gwen. “Do you think they’ll postpone our graduation if our professor goes on a crazy rampage through the city?”

Gwen throws him an incredulous look. “Is that seriously what you’re thinking about right now?”

“I’m joking—you know, to diffuse tension. But listen…I gotta go,” Peter says, taking his cap off and then slipping out of his robe. He bundles them up and holds them out to her. “Can you hang on to that for me? Put them somewhere safe?”

She takes the cap and robe, frowning at him. “Go? Where? The ceremony is about to start. We’re supposed to start lining up in like two minutes.”

“I know. I’ll try to be back soon. I…um…uh…”

“What?” Gwen asks flatly. “Come on. What’s the excuse?"

“I…left my oven on?”

Gwen shakes her head, looking disappointed. “That would almost be believable, if you looked like the kind of person who actually cooked and took care of yourself.”

“Ouch. Thanks. Anyway…see you soon. Hopefully,” Peter says, before spinning away and running back to the unisex restroom.

He slams the door shut and locks it, then fumbles for his phone. He types a frantic text message to Tony:

_come to the unisex bathroom by the rear auditorium door RIGHT NOW_

He stares at the screen, breathing heavily, his heart rate ticking up as he watches three little dots pop up as Tony types. The response appears a second later, in the form of a single word:

_no._

Peter screams into his sleeves.

 _YESYESYES_ he types furiously, nearly cracking the screen. He sends the message, paces back and forth a few times, and then sends another: _pls i really need you,_ along with a string of heart emojis for good measure.

 _okay coming,_ Tony texts back.

There’s a knock at the door a few minutes later. Peter unlocks and opens it a crack, peeking out. 

Tony is standing on the other side, frowning. “What’s the matter? Are you sick? I can’t be walking around like this—I’m trying to keep a low profile here so I don’t steal the spotlight from you grads.”

“No,” Peter says, grabbing Tony’s arm and practically yanking him inside, re-locking the door behind him. “No, I need you to be _very_ high profile. Something’s come up. Spider-Man stuff.”

“Oh, for chrissakes,” Tony sighs. “It’s not that lizard-guy again, is it?” 

“Um, no, it’s a, uh, an octopus guy this time,” Peter explains lamely. “He’s my physics professor, actually. You know, the one I’ve been interning with? It’s kind of a bummer, really—he was such a nice guy and like, completely brilliant. But I know he was having some problems with his wife being sick or something—”

Tony cuts him off. “Okay, I don’t need to hear your professor’s whole tragic villain backstory. Your commencement is supposed to start in five minutes. Your aunt is practically exploding with anticipation.”

“I know—I need you to buy me some time. Sign autographs or—or make a scene, you’re good at that,” Peter says with an edge of desperation. “Just do _something_ to delay things a little until I get back. _Please._ ”

Tony’s face softens. “Sure, kid. I’ll take care of it, don’t worry. You just focus on your job and get back here in one piece, alright?”

Peter takes a deep breath, relieved. “Thank you.”

***

He texts Happy to figure out where the car is parked, then runs full-speed across two busy streets to find it, his dress shoes clacking loudly on the asphalt while irate drivers swerve around him, blasting their horns. 

“Sorry, Happy,” he says as he breaks the lock on the car’s trunk in order to get to his backpack inside. He grabs his bag, then tears down another street and into a empty alleyway, painfully conscious of every passing minute.

“Sorry, May,” he mutters under his breath as he strips out of the nice dress clothes she’d kindly ironed for him and stuffs them into his backpack with one hand while yanking the Spidey suit out with the other. He starts to put the suit on, realizes he’s got it on backwards when it’s halfway up, swallows down another scream of frustration as he shimmies back out of it and tries again.

Finally suited up, he swings the few blocks over to the bank that was robbed, then follows the first responder sirens and the path of destruction down into a nearby subway station, crawling along the ceiling above swarms of commuters fleeing in terror.

“How’s our time, Karen?” he asks.

_“The ceremony started twenty minutes ago.”_

“ _Twenty minutes?_ Oh my god, May is gonna kill me,” he groans, crawling faster. “Which way did the octopus guy go?”

_“Take the southbound tunnel.”_

He finds his errant professor a few miles down the tunnel, metal tentacles ripping up the tracks as he bolts away.

“Dude,” Peter calls to him, webbing two of the tentacles to the wall to halt the professor’s progress. “You had _tenure._ Why are you throwing that away to become a bank robber?”

His professor responds by using his remaining free tentacles to hurl an abandoned subway car at Peter.

Peter leaps out of the way, but the space in the tunnel is tight and the car takes up a lot of it. It clips him as it goes hurtling past, scraping him off the wall with a shower of sparks and sending him tumbling along the wrecked tracks.

He finally comes to a stop and lies there panting for a moment, his whole body throbbing. “Karen? Am I alive?” 

_“Your vitals are elevated but steady, Peter.”_

“Okay, just wanted to be sure,” he replies shakily, pushing himself up onto his elbows to find that his left leg is pinned under the subway car. He presses his other foot against the car, trying to push it away, but the car refuses to budge.

“Shit. I really shoulda eaten breakfast this morning,” he grunts out, kicking at the car. “Karen, do you think—”

He gets a split-second warning in the form of adrenaline jolting up his spine right before a metal tentacle lunges over the top of the overturned car and towards his face. He jerks backwards, but can’t avoid the pincers at the end of tentacle as they clamp around his throat and yank him out from under the car.

 _“Now I am detecting vital sign changes due to distress, Peter,”_ Karen says, sounding way too pleased with herself.

“Thanks, K,” Peter gasps out as the tentacle gripping him by the throat starts brutally tightening its grip. 

“Ow,” he adds, when two more tentacles grab him by each arm and start viciously pulling in opposite directions.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Spider-Man,” Dr. Octavius tells him.

“Yeah, I find that—a little hard to believe, Doc,” Peter replies through clenched teeth as something painfully pops in both of his shoulders. “Your suit—is seriously rad, though. Are these tentacles—psychokinetic?”

“They are indeed.”

“So cool,” Peter wheezes, while the tentacle around his neck continues to throttle him.

 _“Incoming call from Happy Hogan,”_ Karen chirps brightly.

“Karen, I’m begging you—don’t answer—”

“Hey, kid,” Happy’s voice says. “Just checking in. How’s it going?”

“It’s going—great,” Peter chokes out.

“Great. You think you can give us an idea of when you’re gonna wrap things up there? Tony’s got things handled for now, but I can tell May is getting antsy. Think you can be back in fifteen?”

“Yeah—no—I’m gonna—need more—than fifteen minutes.”

“What is going on over there? Are you being killed?” Happy asks impatiently. “You know what? We don’t have time for this. Just sit tight and let me take care of it, and for god’s sake, don’t die before you get your ass back here to get your diploma, alright?”

“Okay, bye,” Peter squeaks out as he's repeatedly slammed up against the diesel-stained wall of the tunnel. He’s pretty sure he’s about to have his arms horribly dismembered from his body and the pincer around his throat is squeezing so tightly he can barely get any air, but all he can think about is May sitting in that auditorium waiting for him, and how fucking unfair it is that he’s clawed his way to graduation day only to die five feet from the finish line.

He’s teetering right on the edge of unconsciousness when he’s abruptly released. He lands hard on the ground below, his injured leg immediately giving out and sending him sprawling onto the tracks. He lies there in a heap, sucking in lungfuls of filthy New York subway tunnel air. It might be the sweetest air he’s ever breathed.

“What up, Spidey?” a familiar voice greets him.

Peter raises watery eyes up to meet Johnny’s grinning face.

“What are you doing here?” Peter asks, coughing.

“I heard you could use some help so you don’t miss your graduation,” Johnny replies, kneeling beside him. “You look _mad_ fucked up, by the way.”

“Yeah, I think I’m done,” Peter says weakly, frowning. “Won’t you get in trouble for this? I thought you couldn’t handle stuff like this without permission from the U.N. and the local government.”

Johnny shrugs. “What are they gonna do, fire me?”

“I mean…yeah, they might.”

Johnny shrugs again. “Whatever. Do you know how much money I could pull in if I was no longer a government employee and could accept all the endorsement deals and modeling contracts constantly being thrown at me? We could move out of our shitty apartment and into a big ass fancy loft in Tribeca.”

“We?”

“Well, yeah, I’m not gonna live there alone. You’d have to come, too. I’d be so bored without my best bud around. I’d let you live there rent free, in the lap of luxury. I’d be like...your platonic sugar daddy.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet,” Peter says. He grabs Johnny’s shoulder. “Hey—thank you. For everything. I really love you, man.”

“I love you, too, Petey—especially the way you always get all sappy and romantic whenever you’re hyped up on pain and adrenaline,” Johnny coos, standing up and offering a hand to Peter to help him to his feet. “You better get moving or you’re gonna miss your graduation. I’ll take care of business here.”

Peter winces as he’s dragged upright. “Will you be okay on your own?” 

“Yeah, don’t worry. Sue's on her way over, and I’ve watched a lot of tentacle porn—I know how to handle this situation.”

“Dude. _Gross._ ”

“Hey—don’t kink shame,” Johnny says, as he’s engulfed again in flames. “Now go graduate and make us proud, you little nerd.”

***

Peter makes it back to the ceremony in record time, considering that his entire body feels like one giant, throbbing bruise and he’s pretty sure the only things keeping him conscious and upright are a massive dose of adrenaline combined with sheer force of will.

To his complete surprise, Gwen is waiting for him in the now empty hallway, his cap and gown still bundled up in her arms. She jumps up when she sees him staggering towards her, her expression alarmed.

“Oh my god, Peter—what happened?”

“Uh, just…stuff. And things. I’m fine,” Peter says, futilely trying to smooth the wrinkles out of his dress shirt. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was waiting for you to come back,” Gwen replies, rushing over and grabbing him by the elbow, pulling his arm over her shoulders. “You’re really lucky—they’re just about to start calling up the engineering students. You barely made it back in time.”

“That’s so nice. You’re so nice. You didn’t have to do that,” Peter says, leaning heavily on her. “Did I miss anything?”

“Yeah, you missed Tony Stark giving a surprise commencement speech,” Gwen says, steering Peter towards the bathroom. “ _And_ he said he’s going to pay off everyone’s student loan debt. It was crazy. The whole auditorium went nuts.”

“Wow. That’s awesome. Was the speech any good?” Peter asks as Gwen kicks the bathroom door open and manhandles him inside.

She shrugs, locking the door. “Yeah, it was…something. Started off really strong. Funny. Typical inspirational stuff. Then got kind of long and rambling toward the end. The last ten or so minutes was just him showing us pictures of his daughter on this cool holographic projector thing, which was like…random but also sort of cute? You know, to see Iron Man being like a proud dad or whatever.”

“God, he is such a dork,” Peter mumbles, slumping against the wall and dabbing at his bleeding nose with the back of his hand. 

“I dunno, I think it was really sweet,” Gwen says, handing Peter a wad of paper towels, still frowning at him. “Peter—I think you need to go to the hospital. I don’t know anything about medicine, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to have one pupil wildly bigger than the other.”

“No, I’m good. I’m great,” Peter insists, blinking away the dark spots dancing in his vision. “Let’s go graduate."

“You’re bleeding through your shirt,” Gwen points out, her eyebrows knit together in concern.

Peter shrugs, then winces at the movement. “It’s fine. The robe will hide it.”

“Peter—”

“My aunt’s out there,” Peter cuts her off. “She took me in when I was a little kid, and after my uncle died she raised me as a single-parent. I put her through some really, really terrible things—like, a million-times worse than the usual rebellious teenager stuff. And seeing me graduate from college is this huge deal for her. I _cannot_ fuck this up for her, Gwen. I’ll crawl across that stage if I have to.”

Gwen looks at him for a moment longer, worry and indecision written all over her face, before she sighs, defeated.

“This feels so wrong, but—here,” she says, taking the bundle out from under her arm. She shakes out Peter’s robe, holding it open for him and helping him to put it on.

“Thank you. Seriously. I know you spent the last four years saying that we’re not friends, but—you’ve been a really good friend that whole time anyway,” Peter tells her, wincing again as he slips an arm into the robe’s sleeve. “Do you want to come to my graduation party this afternoon? Tony Stark is hosting it at his lake house and he’s been obsessively planning it for like three months straight, so it should be really great.”

“ _Tony Stark_ is hosting your graduation party?” Gwen asked, her eyebrows raised. “Are you concussed? Do you have brain damage?”

“Maybe. But really—I know I lie to you all the time, but I swear on my parents’ graves this is true. And that’s not an empty swear—my parents are actually dead. That’s true, too.”

Gwen stares at him, looking dumbfounded and a touch aghast. “Okay...why exactly is Tony Stark hosting your graduation party?”

“He’s, uh…he’s my aunt’s drug dealer.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I’m kidding. Sort of. But it’s hard to explain, and I don’t want to miss any more of the ceremony than I already have,” Peter says, “so please just accept the fact that yes,Tony Stark, Iron Man, is hosting my graduation party at his rad lake house, and you are invited. I’ll text you the address.”

Gwen shakes her head. “Peter, you have the weirdest life.”

“You have _no_ idea,” Peter says with a little laugh that turns into a painful cough.

“I think I’m starting to put together a picture, actually,” Gwen says vaguely. She studies Peter’s face again, biting her lip. “Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital? You look really messed up.” 

Peter waves a hand. “I’m fine, seriously. It’s not that bad. It’s just a little strangulation and some blunt force trauma. That’s a pretty typical day for me.”

“That is so disturbing,” Gwen says, fumbling under her robe and pulling something out of a pocket in her dress. “Here. I have some pressed powder. You want me to at least try to hide some of the bruising?”

“I would really appreciate that, and so would my aunt. I promised her nice pictures.”

“Okay, well, I’ll do my best, but you’re probably still gonna have to touch them up for her,” Gwen says, tipping Peter’s face up and gently dabbing powder over the bruise blossoming along his temple.

When she finishes, they sneak into the auditorium where the ceremony is currently well underway, a procession of students making their way up to the stage one-by-one to receive their diplomas and have their moment of glory.

Peter and Gwen stand awkwardly off to the side of the stage, waiting for their names to be called. Every now and again Peter will sway on his feet, and Gwen will give him a sharp pinch on his arm. It’s enough to keep him awake, until finally— _finally_ —he hears his name being called.

Peter takes a deep breath. He climbs the stairs up to the stage a little unsteadily, pausing at the top as a wave of dizziness rolls over him, then takes a few wobbling steps out. He glances out into the auditorium and spots May in the front row next to Happy. She gives him a huge smile and an encouraging thumbs up. He smiles back and returns the gesture, and then the smile vanishes as the stage suddenly tilts under his feet.

“Oh, no,” he manages to mumble, lurching sideways and then pitching forward into a deep, yawning void.

***

When he opens his eyes again, he finds himself lying flat on his back with a splitting headache, squinting bleary-eyed up at May, Pepper, and Happy hovering close overhead. 

“Hi, baby. Welcome back,” May says, holding his head in her hands and running her thumbs across his cheekbones.

“What happened?” Peter croaks out.

“You fainted, nosedived off the stage, and cracked your head open,” Happy replies.

“Oh man,” Peter mumbles. “Did I at least get my diploma first?”

Happy shakes his head. “Sorry, kid. You didn’t even make it halfway across the stage.”

“Oh no,” Peter says, totally crushed. “May—I’m sorry. I tried, I really did. I tried so hard for you.”

May leans down and kisses his forehead. “I know you did, honey. Don’t worry about it. I’ve had nearly eight years to come to terms with the fact that these sorts of things will happen.”

Peter manages a watery smile for her, despite being completely heartbroken over her words, even if her intention behind them had been kind. He looks around at them again, then asks, “Where’s Mr. Stark?” 

“He went with Morgan to go flag down the ambulance,” Pepper says.

“You called an ambulance?” Peter frowns up at them, dismayed.

“Not for you,” Happy clarifies. “Someone’s grandma keeled over when she saw all the blood.”

“Oh god—I killed someone’s grandma?” Peter asks, close to tears now.

“She’s fine, honey,” May assures him. “They just want to look her over, that’s all.”

There's a flurry of noise and activity from over her shoulder, and then Tony appears in Peter’s narrow line of sight, towing Morgan along and looking amused and proud and exasperated all at once.

“Well, kid, this has been a hell of a graduation,” Tony says as he squats down next to Peter’s head. “But I didn’t expect anything less from you. So—you feel up to Italian for lunch? Or should we head up to the lake house and skip straight to the party?”

“I think I’d really like to just go to the lake house now,” Peter answers weakly. “I might need to lie down for a little bit.”

“Excellent idea,” Tony says, helping Peter up. He puts an arm around Peter’s shoulders while May holds Peter’s hand, and together they all file towards the exit, past other graduates still milling around the auditorium hugging family and friends and smiling for pictures, unfazed by the moment of drama in the face of their collective success.

“Oh, hey,” Tony says suddenly, stopping short. “What are we doing—Happy, give the kid his diploma. That’s the whole reason we’re here, right?”

“Christ, I completely forgot I grabbed it in all the chaos,” Happy says, shifting the diploma out from under his arm and holding it out to Peter, looking immensely proud and about as close to ebullient as Happy can get. “Here you go, Pete. Congratulations.”

Peter takes the diploma from Happy and flips open the cover. He looks down at the certificate printed with his name and his degree, thinking back on all the sleepless nights and missed classes and late assignments, all the tense times he snuck out of and back into his dorm and the bruises he hid from his roommates. He thinks of the few but dearly cherished friends he’s made who stuck with him despite having every reason not to, and the many more who drifted away. He thinks of MJ far away in Atlanta, of the fearful exhilaration of finding your first love and the lasting heartache of its loss, and of a future that feels both wide open and frighteningly nebulous, where the only thing he feels absolutely certain of is Spider-Man and all the accompanying triumph and agony that await him there.

“Lotta work for a little slip of paper, huh, kid?” Tony asks in a low voice, squeezing Peter’s shoulders.

“Yeah,” Peter agrees thickly, carefully closing the cover over the diploma. “It’s good, though. I did it.”

“You sure did,” Tony says, squeezing him again. “Now, let’s go celebrate.”

***

The party is a lot bigger than Peter had anticipated, because Tony’s idea of “close friends and family” is apparently far more expansive than Peter’s. Captains America, former and current, are both there, and Dr. Banner and the Bartons, and Natasha and Rhodey, and some people that Peter is fairly sure he’s never met before in his life, but who congratulate him all the same. He spots Gwen at one point in animated conversation with Carol Danvers, a furious blush highlighting her cheeks. Everyone roasts Peter’s gap-toothed smile, except for Ned, who just hugs Peter tightly for a long time, and Thor, who regales Peter with a rambling story about how Asgardian warriors would wear the lost teeth of children on necklaces into battle as a token of luck, before offering Peter an ancient-looking gold coin in exchange for his tooth, like some kind of beefy, bearded tooth fairy. 

Peter is struggling to think of a way to politely decline the offer of a thousand-year-old alien god when he’s rescued by Morgan, who comes running out of the house shrieking his name. She barrels into him with enough force to make him stagger back a step.

“I picked out the cake,” Morgan tells him proudly. “It’s in the tent. Do you want to see it?”

“Absolutely,” Peter says, letting her tug him over to the big white tent the catering company has set up beside the lake. “What did you choose? Chocolate? Vanilla? Something a little—oh, whoa.” 

He stops short, taking in the enormous pink, blue, and red frosted monstrosity sitting in a place of honor on the largest table. “Wow. That is—wow.”

“It’s Barbie Spider-Man,” Pepper explains, coming up behind them. “Tony said you told him to let Morgan choose the cake, and she couldn’t decide on one or the other, so…” 

Pepper gestures to the cake with a helpless sort of shrug, offering Peter a smile that is half-amused, half-apologetic.

“Do you like it?” Morgan asks.

“I love it,” Peter says honestly. “Barbie is one of my personal heroes. She’s so strong and capable and always put together despite having like, a hundred different jobs. I really aspire to that. She reminds me of your mom, actually.”

Pepper smiles wider, soft and pleased now, wrapping him up in a hug and kissing his cheek. “Congratulations again, sweetheart. We’re so proud.”

Peter spends about another hour being congratulated by people and accepting enough celebratory toasts to actually get a little bit buzzed before he escapes into the house, feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.

He wanders into the cozy, blessedly quiet den off the back of the kitchen. Happy is stretched out in the recliner in the corner, snoring softly. Tony sits on the adjacent sofa, his eyes closed and head tilted back, his glasses folded on his chest. His arm hangs over the arm of the sofa, a half-empty bottle of beer dangling precariously in his lax grasp.

Peter crosses the room and gently takes the bottle out of his hand, setting it on the side table. 

Tony stirs a little, cracking an eyelid open. 

“Hey, there’s the man of the hour,” he murmurs drowsily. “What’s up, buttercup?"

“Nothing. I just need a break for a minute,” Peter replies, curling into the space next to Tony on the sofa. “You spent weeks planning this party, and now you’re back here napping the whole time?”

“We’re old geezers, me and Happy. It’s our god-given right to nap wherever and whenever we want,” Tony says, shutting his eyes and letting his head drop against the back of the sofa once more. “I’ve seen you through your college graduation and into adulthood in more-or-less one piece. I can rest now. At least, until Morgan is a teenager. God, what a scary thought.”

“You’ll be okay. It can’t be worse than anything I put you through. I can’t imagine her ever crashing a plane on Coney Island.”

Tony snorts. “You don’t think so?”

“Well. Probably not,” Peter amends, resting his own head against the arm of the sofa and watching Tony from half-lidded eyes.

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot—I got a little graduation gift here for you,” Tony says, sitting up and grabbing a slim white box off the side table. He offers it to Peter, smiling.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Peter says, taking the box. He lifts the lid. Inside, lying on a bed of tissue paper, is his uncle Ben’s wristwatch.

Peter looks up at Tony, startled. “How did—you didn’t—”

Tony holds up a hand. “Relax, no one was harmed in recovering that watch, I promise. Not physically, at least. I had Natasha track down your pal Harry and give him a stern lecture, that’s all. You’ll be pleased to know that she also... _persuaded_ him to go back to rehab. I have a feeling he’ll actually stick with it to the end this time. He’s really lucky, you know, to have a friend like you.”

“Wow, thank you, Mr. Stark. I really appreciate this,” Peter says. 

He runs the pad of his thumb over the watch’s familiar face, feeling the tiny scratches etched into its surface from wear over the years, and the soft faded indent on the leather band where Ben had fastened the watch’s buckle every day before he left for work in the morning, and then suddenly he’s crying again.

Tony reaches over to squeeze Peter’s knee. “Hey, what’s the matter?” 

“Nothing. I’ve just been so tired—like, tired on a cosmic level, like I could sleep for a hundred years and it wouldn’t even touch it,” Peter says, wiping at his eyes. “And I think I just really needed this right now—this reminder that all of this is important, even when it completely sucks...that it's all still worth it, you know?”

“Yeah,” Tony says gently. “I know, kid. I do. And it is worth it, I promise.”

Peter nods, wiping at the tears on his cheeks with the heel of his hand, feeling both relieved and sorrowful all at once.

“And hey, if you need more proof, look at that,” Tony murmurs, nudging Peter and nodding towards the doorway. “A small miracle.”

Peter looks up, and then sits bolt upright.

MJ is standing in the doorway, shifting her weight from one foot to another. She offers a hesitant smile.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” Peter breathes.

“Well, I suppose I should play host for a bit,” Tony says in the beat of awkward silence that follows, getting up off the sofa and shaking Happy awake, pulling him up out of the recliner. “We’ll go grab some more beers. Let’s go, Hap. I need to talk to you about this great ENT I know.”

And then Peter and MJ are alone together.

“You’ve been crying,” MJ observes after another stretch of silence. “I thought I made you promise me you wouldn’t cry.”

Peter huffs out a little laugh, wiping at his cheeks again. “Yeah. I’m not very good at keeping promises. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” MJ says. “I’m sorry I’m late. I tried to make it to your graduation, but they weren’t letting any traffic into Manhattan—something about a guy in an octopus suit?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter assures her. “Graduation was...kind of a disaster anyway.”

MJ smiles again, more relaxed and natural this time. “That sounds about right for you.” She raises an eyebrow. “Are you missing a tooth?”

Peter grimaces. “Uh. Yeah. It’s a long story. I’m going to get it fixed.” He looks at her, not quite believing she’s really there. “I didn’t think you’d come. You just started your new job, and...you know...the whole thing between you and me...”

“Yeah...I didn’t think I could make it, either,” MJ says, finally crossing the room and sitting down beside him, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. “And then I was riding the bus home from work yesterday, and for some reason I started thinking about the time you carried me up to the very top of the Empire State Building on my birthday. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“The climb up was crazy windy and freezing cold and fucking _terrifying,_ and it was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever agreed to do,” she continues. “But when we made it all the way to the top? The view of the city was... _amazing._ It made the whole insane, scary climb completely worth it. I was so happy I’d done it.”

She reaches over then and takes Peter’s hand in hers, rubbing her thumb lightly over his bruised knuckles. “The point is—I never would have seen it if I hadn’t been with you, if I hadn’t completely trusted you to get us safely to the top,” she says, before taking a deep breath. “And then I was thinking about that, and thinking about how much I missed you, and as soon as I got off the bus I got a call from Tony, and he offered to fly me home. And I don’t believe in like, fate or destiny or whatever, but it felt like this really perfect coincidence, so—”

“MJ,” Peter interrupts. “I am completely exhausted, and I’m pretty sure I have a concussion, too, so could you maybe just talk to me in plain, straightforward English? ‘Cause I really don’t want to get my hopes crushed, but it sounds like you’re saying maybe you’d want to...that we could...”

“Try to make this work,” MJ finishes for him, nodding again. She offers him a small, tentative smile. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I know it’s gonna be hard, but maybe all the hard stuff is what makes it really worth it, you know? I mean, if you’re up for it, too?”

“Yes. Absolutely,” Peter says immediately, feeling almost bowled over with relief and happiness. 

MJ smiles wider, the same joy and relief mirrored in her own expression. She leans forward and kisses him, soft and sweet, and Peter thinks that if he could just kiss her like this every day, then he could survive anything the universe throws at him.

“Do you want a piece of Barbie Spider-Man cake to celebrate?” he asks her once they part.

“Barbie Spider-Man cake? Hell yeah, I’m here for that,” MJ agrees.

***

They eat the cake out on the porch overlooking the lake, watching Morgan and the Barton kids race around barefoot and hurl rocks into the water with raucous, youthful exuberance. The afternoon sun hits the lake at a perfect angle, making the ripples over the surface dazzle and flash. Peter remembers how he had thought the idea of building a house way out here in the middle of nowhere was ridiculous, how he had wondered how Tony could ever want to be away from the life and excitement of the city, but he thinks he understands it now—that desire for a little corner of peace, for something slow and soft and golden.

“Hey, do you think Sam would give me a quick interview about his experience taking over as Captain America if I asked him for one now?” MJ asks as she licks the last of the frosting off of her fork. “I don’t know when I’ll get another opportunity.”

“Yeah, Sam’s the best. Real chill dude.”

“Awesome. I’ll be right back,” MJ says, getting up and brushing cake crumbs from her shirt. “Don’t run off to fight the mob or something while I’m gone.”

“You know I can’t guarantee that.”

“I know. I was just kidding. I’ve accepted my fate,” MJ says, flashing him a wry smile before heading off to corner Sam.

Peter sits alone a while longer, watching Thor and Dr. Banner arm wrestle at the picnic table while the kids scream for their chosen hero and some of the adults exchange bets, feeling like he’s finally relaxing for the first time in years, some tightly wound coil unwinding just a little.

Tony comes wandering back to join him eventually, sitting down on the porch swing beside Peter and handing him a beer. They sit in companionable silence for a minute, sipping their beers, until Tony nudges Peter with his elbow. “Everything’s good, then?”

Peter releases a long exhale. “Yeah. Maybe. I think so. I mean, we’re gonna work on it. So.” He looks over at Tony. “Thank you, by the way."

Tony waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, my pleasure. I’m very fond of Michelle. I appreciate a woman who can inspire terror and admiration in equal measure. And you know,” he adds, running a hand over his graying goatee, his tone turned contemplative. “I had a lot of fun planning this party. And I’m thinking now that I’ve got this event under my belt, I could go bigger...like, let’s say, planning a wedding?”

Peter snorts into his beer. “No. No, no. I literally just graduated a few hours ago. Give me a minute to breathe.”

“I mean, I’m not talking right this very minute—I know you still have to establish yourself, get a career going, all that fun adult stuff. I’m just saying soonish. Pep and I left all our wedding planning to the professionals, but I really think I could do a good job. This could be a second career for me. A wedding, and then...a baby shower? Or maybe you do the ultra-modern thing and have the baby shower first, then the wedding down the line.”

Peter chokes on his beer this time. “No. That is— _absolutely not._ Keep dreaming.”

“Look, I’m not getting any younger, and I’d really like to be able to chase the little suckers around before my knees give out completely—”

“I am _not_ going to entertain this conversation with you,” Peter says firmly. “You’re being so irresponsible for even bringing it up as a joke. I’m barely keeping myself alive. The thought of having a tiny human entirely dependent upon me for survival is...unfathomable.”

“Well. You’ll come around eventually,” Tony says confidently, patting Peter’s arm. “I did.”

Peter shakes his head. “You are reaching so far into the future right now.”

“I’m a futurist, what can I say? But I think I’ve gotten a lot better at enjoying living in the moment, right?” Tony asks, tapping his beer bottle against Peter’s. “And you know what would make me enjoy the moment even more? A couple of chubby little—”

He’s interrupted by Morgan tearing up the porch steps, panting, her entire face alight with excitement.

“Dad, look what Gerald’s doing,” she squeals, pointing to the tent.

“Christ on a cracker, the alpaca’s eating the cake,” Tony says, leaping up and grabbing Morgan’s hand, letting her tug him down the porch steps while he frantically waves an arm at Pepper. “Hey, Pep! Honey, your alpaca’s getting into the cake!”

Peter sits back and watches the unfolding chaos contentedly, his lips curved into an amused smile against the mouth of the beer bottle.

MJ makes her way back up the porch steps a few minutes later, resuming her seat beside Peter on the swing, the same look of amused contentment on her face.

“Ah, there we go—Iron Man wrestling an angry, spitting alpaca away from a Barbie Spider-Man themed cake while Hawkeye and the Hulk assist,” she says, nodding. “That is exactly the kind of weirdness I have become accustomed to—even a little fond of.”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, putting an arm around her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> You can also find me on [tumblr](https://groo-ock.tumblr.com/)


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